The company will shut down the refinery for about two weeks during which it also intends to perform maintenance operations on the refinery.
Ceylon Petroleum is expecting to restart the refinery when it receives its next crude oil shipment from Dubai which is scheduled to unload on 8 or 9 November 2012.
Ceylon Petroleum general manager Susantha Silva was quoted by Reuters as saying that the refinery will not close down permanently.
"We are getting one crude parcel from Dubai on Nov. 8 or 9 and one from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 13," Silva added.
"Another one scheduled (from Abu Dhabi) in December. So we have lined up crude for refining."
The western sanctions have so far thwarted Sri Lanka’s attempts to secure Iranian crude oil shipments thrice, as Ceylon Petroleum has been striving to obtain shipping insurance and payment.
Ceylon Petroleum’s attempts to run the refinery at its full capacity on other crudes like Arabian light are not yielding positively.
