Europe’s oil refiners are adopting the wily and flexible ways of traders to ensure survival as the sector faces further shrinkage, delegates at an industry conference said. Hard times have pushed them to pick and choose from a wider range of crudes, ferry feedstock between their own refineries to get the optimal mix of products and seek out deeper discounts from suppliers. “Commercial operations need to be totally, fully integrated with the technical aspects,” Dario Scaffardi, general manager of Italian refiner Saras ( SRS.MI ) told the Platts refining summit. “It’s been the single most important thing that we’ve concentrated on. You have to look for the most challenging crudes.” Scaffardi said his refinery processed 30-35 different types of crude oil in 2015 – double the previous year. The U.S. shale oil revolution changed flows of oil worldwide and pushed some crudes, such as Nigeria’s light sweet oil, out […]