2024-01-17 03:30:00
© Reuters. Snow freezes U.S. oil industry from North Dakota to Texas
Zhitong Finance APP has learned that a severe winter storm shut down an oil refinery on the U.S. Texas Gulf Coast on Tuesday, triggered failures at other refineries and halved North Dakota’s oil production, while giving Snow and rain fell across large swathes of the United States.
Sources familiar with the company’s operations said Total Energy’s 238,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, was on hold Tuesday morning as a winter storm brought frigid temperatures to the U.S. Gulf Coast. There was a power outage throughout the plant and the company was inspecting equipment.
Oil production in North Dakota fell by half on Tuesday due to extreme cold weather and operational challenges, the North Dakota Pipeline Authority said.
The North Dakota Pipeline Authority estimates that oil production is down by 600,000 to 650,000 barrels per day.
ExxonMobil’s fluid catalytic cracking unit and coking unit, which produces gasoline, returned to normal operations Monday night after a malfunction occurred at ExxonMobil’s refinery in suburban Baytown, Texas, due to severe cold weather.
Flint Hills Resources said its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, was severely affected by the unusually cold weather, particularly at its western plant, where instrumentation on operating equipment was affected by freezing rain and the plant’s daily production capacity Reaching 343,000 barrels/day.
On Tuesday, WTI crude oil futures closed at $72.40 a barrel, down 28 cents, or 0.4%. Global benchmark Brent crude futures rose 14 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $78.29 a barrel.
RBOB gasoline prices fell 24 cents to settle at $2.1195 per gallon. The market is seen as well-supplied because refineries have large inventories of gasoline.
Extensive factory maintenance
Valero Energy Corp on Monday began planning an overhaul of the large crude distillation unit (CDU) at its 335,000 barrels per day refinery in Port Arthur, people familiar with plant operations said on Tuesday.
In addition to shutting down the 210,000 b/d AVU-146 CDU, Valero also removed the coking unit and vacuum distillation unit (VDU) associated with AVU-146, sources said. The work is expected to take 45 days to complete.
Half of the units at the Valero Port Arthur refinery will be affected by the shutdown of AVU-146, the larger of the two CDUs that begins the refining process by breaking crude oil into feedstock for all other units in the refinery.
Three Port Arthur refineries, including Motiva Enterprises, the largest refinery in the United States with a capacity of 626,000 barrels per day, have shut down major units. Motiva Refinery began maintenance of the coking unit of the crude oil unit on January 8.
In a regulatory filing, Marathon Petroleum said in a report on Monday that a remaining hydrogenator failed at its Galveston Bay refinery in Texas City, Texas, which has a daily throughput of 593,000 barrels. The unit returned to normal operations late Monday.
Delek reported on Sunday that its refinery in Big Spring, Texas, with a capacity of 73,000 barrels per day, experienced a malfunction due to low temperatures.
Valero notified regulators on Sunday after a disturbance occurred at the company’s McKee refinery in Sunray, Texas, with a capacity of 195,000 barrels per day.
Valero told residents near its 210,000 barrel-per-day Houston refinery on Tuesday that they may have to use the plant’s safety flare system to manage excess material.
Refineries use safety flares when they cannot process hydrocarbons properly.
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