March 8, 2012:

Alon USA Energy Inc said on Thursday it will restart its California refineries at the beginning of the second quarter this year.  Last December, the company shut its 84,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) refining complex -- in which plants in Bakersfield, Paramount and Long Beach, California, operate as one integrated model -- because of poor economics.  "In light of the weak margin environment, we shut down the California refineries in December to make minor revisions to a hydrocracker in preparation for receiving new crude blends" to improve liquid recovery and light product yields, the company said in a fourth-quarter earnings release.

"We expect to restart the California refineries at the beginning of the second quarter of 2012," Alon said. The Bakersfield plant had been producing about 11,000 barrels per day of motor fuels refined from feedstocks supplied by the Paramount and Long Beach refineries when the company halted operations.

Alon also said that in the first quarter this year, the company expected average throughput at its 67,000 bpd Big Spring, Texas, and its 80,000 bpd Krotz Springs, Louisiana, refineries to each be about 70,000 bpd.  In the fourth quarter last year, the Big Spring plant's average daily throughput was 71,700 bpd, while that at Krotz Springs was 52,155 bpd because of a shutdown for planned work.

That work at Krotz Springs involved upgrades to improve crude slate flexibility, fluid-catalytic cracking unit capacity and yields and jet fuel yields.  The refinery started receiving West Texas Intermediate-priced crudes in December, and Alon expects to reach its coal of processing up to 25,000 barrels per day of those crudes this year, the company said.

By Reuters