July 31, 2012:

Marathon Petroleum Corp can run up to 75 percent light-sweet crude oil across its six refineries if the price is right, executives told analysts Tuesday. "We constantly get questions about how much sweet crude we can run at a refinery or in our system. The answer is we can run a lot of light sweet crude," Mike Palmer, senior vice president of supply, distribution and planning, said during the company's second-quarter earnings conference call. A "rough ballpark" figure would be 75 percent of the company's crude slate could be light sweet, he said.

Light sweet crude production is ramping up in the U.S. thanks to increased shale oil output, giving refineries a cheap alternative to more expensive global crudes. Palmer said Marathon, with four refineries in the Midwest and two on the Gulf Coast -- including its 490,000 barrels-per-day Garyville, Louisiana plant -- could make adjustments to increase how much light sweet they process. "At Garyville, we're running a lot more light sweet crude than we forecast in the past," he said. The Garyville refinery underwent a $3.9 billion expansion that was finished in 2010.

The company on Tuesday reported higher second-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street forecasts, as profit margins climbed at its refineries near Chicago and on the Gulf Coast. Marathon Petroleum, which was spun off from Marathon Oil Corp a year ago, posted a profit of $814 million, or $2.38 per share, compared with $802 million or $2.24 per share in the same period a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, earnings per share were $2.53, slightly above the $2.51 per share that analysts had on average forecast, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenues fell to $20.3 billion from $20.8 billion a year before. Marathon's refining and marketing gross margin rose to $11.13 per barrel in the second quarter of 2012 from $10.78 per barrel in the second quarter of 2011.

Marathon Petroleum's shares have rallied nearly 43 percent so far this year through Monday's close and were up 1.4 percent in late Tuesday morning trading to $48.15 a share.

By Reuters