Gulf Refinery Downstream Co. is a refining company that has many refineries around the world. Gulf refineryis one of its two refineries in the Middle East. Located in the Arabia Gulf, it is a semi-conversionrefinery with a capacity of 300 MBD. Major products of the refinery include gasoline,kerosene/diesel, fuel oil and asphalt. The refinery has the flexibility to run several crudes. The last Solomon survey showed mixed results for the Gulf refinery. In the Cost of ProductionIndex, the refinery was in the fourth quartile, while in the Maintenance Index the refinery was inthe third quartile. The Operation Availability Index improved to the second quartile in the lastsurvey. Overall the refinery was placed in the fourth quartile compared to its peers.For the last two years, the refinery net cash margins were negative, which is impacting theoverall performance of the Downstream Co. (See table 1) The shareholders and the BoD areasking the CEO to develop strategies for tu...