Assignment The European Refining Industry
The refining sectors profitability has been largely cyclical for as long as people remember. Constant variations in product demand, production levels and consumer prices have seen a myriad of closures, bankruptcies, shutdowns as well as significant investments in the past to try and keep refinery product outputs aligned with changing consumer buying habits.
Despite the fact that Europe is one of the largest economic regions in the world, falling demand for petroleum products, brought about by sustained high prices and taxation levels, Governmental policies and fiscal measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by dampening demand and encouraging consumers towards alternative energy, has caused refining margins to erode. Yet the worlds appetite for refined petroleum products is continuing to grow especially in the Asia Pacific region.
So what must existing European refiners now do to meet the challenges of the market, and how must they go about retaining competitive advantage to ensure survival in a world where increasing environmental legislation will continue to exert disproportionate pressure on Europes refineries compared to other regions?
You are required to write an essay- or report-style paper on the future for the European refining industry; detailing the challenges the industry faces; the historical evolution of refining assets; and the competivity issues faced by Europeans from new-build refineries in the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and China.
Your work should provide a balanced, analytical view of these issues and give the readership of your report the prospects for future European refining profitability, as discovered in your background researches.
Having read the above background, and conducted some preliminary research and reading, your Assignment Brief is to write a 2,300-word report on the future of the European Refining Industry as a report or essay to demonstrate a rounded appreciation of the issues and challenges that this sector is facing. Coherent analysis supported with reasoned evidence and logical arguments will be required.
Internet research and background reading will inform a large part of your writing, but what is required, and thus will form the basis of assessment and marking, is your own views, conclusions and analysis by interpreting the data against textbook theory, together with your own ideas, thoughts and personal research.
Web-based research should include, but not exclusively, the following sources: <www.ukpia.com>, <www.europia.eu>, <www.ec.europa.eu/energy>, <www.ec.europa.eu/environment>, <www.world-petroleum.org>, and <www.oilandgaslogistics.wordpress.com>.