Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Repsol YPF SA is shutting down its Petronor refinery in northern Spain as workers prepare for a four-day strike.

The protest in Bilbao is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Madrid time today and last until Nov. 10, according to a Petronor spokesman. It’s the company’s biggest refinery.

The Petronor refinery has a distillation capacity of 11 million tons a year, according to its Web site. That’s about 220,000 barrels of oil a day.

A crude distillation unit at the site was shut in mid- September because of low profitability caused by falling demand for fuels such as gasoline and diesel. That unit will remain out of operation when the refinery resumes after the strike, the Petronor spokesman said today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Javier Marquina in Madrid at jmarquina@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 6, 2009 05:47 EST