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Coronavirus pandemic

Gazprom Neft retains plans for oil refining in April despite decreasing demand

Further decisions on refining volumes will be made depending on the market changes and restrictions introduced in connection with the pandemic

MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/. Gazprom Neft retained its plans for oil refining volumes in March - April 2020, despite a decreasing demand for oil products worldwide due to the situation with coronavirus. In the future, the company will make decisions on volumes depending on market changes and restrictions, Gazprom Neft told TASS.

"Refining volumes in March - April remain at the planned level for 2020. Further decisions on refining volumes will be made depending on the market changes and restrictions introduced in connection with the pandemic," the company noted.

Currently, due to the pandemic in several cities, the intensity of traffic has been reduced, air traffic is limited. All this led to oil refineries around the world beginning to reduce production, and some refineries suspended their work.

Gazprom Neft owns the Omsk and Moscow refineries, as well as a 50% stake in the Yaroslavl refinery (together with Rosneft) and the NIS refining complex in Serbia. The company noted that its plants are able to flexibly plan production and respond to changes in the market situation, through changing the range of products, among other measures.

"The integrated scheduling system, which promptly forms a production plan taking into account the needs of the market, the capabilities of the company’s refineries and logistics, the needs of sales units, gives the company the flexibility to plan production and respond to changes in the market situation. Due to the high level of modernization, Gazprom Neft refineries have a high flexibility and a set of technological alternatives for developing various assortments of marketable products," Gazprom Neft said.

In late December 2019, Chinese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in more than 160 countries, including Russia.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. To date, more than 786,600 people have been infected worldwide and over 37,800 have died, while more than 165,800 have recovered.

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