June 4, 2012:

Motiva Enterprises LLC    last week opened its Port Arthur refinery, the largest in the U.S., with full potential output of 600,000 barrels per day, The Galveston Daily News reports. That dropped the BP refinery, with 475,000 barrels per day, down a spot in the ranks. When Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) completes the expansion of its Garyville, La., refinery, the BP refinery will drop down another place, the Daily News reports. The Louisiana refinery currently has full potential output of 464,000 barrels per day, but after the expansion is complete, that could increase to at least 475,000 barrels per day. The other refineries currently at the top of the list include Exxon Mobil Corp    .’s (NYSE: XOM) Baytown refinery, at No. 2 with 560,646 barrels per day, and its Baton Rouge, La., refinery, at No. 3 with 502,000 barrels per day.

By Houston Business Journal

June 4, 2012:

Kaduna — A total of 405 youths have so far benefited from the Youth Empowerment and Skills Acquisition Programme (YESAP) of the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC), the Manager, Public Affairs of the company, Abdullahi Idris has said.  Speaking during the opening ceremony of the batch 4 beneficiaries of the scheme, Abdullahi said N240 million has been spent on the training. He said the cost included consultancy fee, feeding and monthly allowances, transportation fare as well as take off grant of N100, 000 each for the participants. Each training lasts for six months duration. One hundred and five youths are benefiting from the present edition, he said adding that the edition was unique because the minimum entry qualification of SSCE was enforced. and nominees went through rigorous process of writing tests.

District Head of Kamazou, Auta Makama, commended the management of the KRPC for the gesture and appealed for increase in the number of participants in subsequent programmes. In his address, the Managing Director, KRPC, Engineer Bolale A. Ayodele, enjoined the participants to take the training very serious so as to justify the huge resources invested in the training. "KRPC has invested huge sums of scarce resources, time and energy and your various communities have reposed a lot of confidence in you to be in the programme, it is my hope that the investments will not go to waste," Engineer Ayodele who was represented by the Executive Director Operations, Engineer Ian Udoh said.

By All Africa

June 4, 2012:

In Texas recently there was a grand opening for what is now the largest refinery in the U.S. Shell and Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Saudi Aramco, have more than doubled the capacity of their Port Arthur refinery. The refinery business has been going through a tough period in recent years. Americans are buying less gasoline and other petroleum products — about 10 percent less than in 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Refiners' profits have been squeezed between this declining demand and rising prices for the main ingredient in gasoline — oil. Across the country, refineries are shutting down because they're no longer profitable. It's surprising, then, to hear someone in the oil business get excited about a refinery expansion. "This is the largest manufacturing project ever done in the state of Texas," says Bob Pease, president and CEO of Motiva Enterprises, which is a 50-50 partnership between Shell and Saudi Aramco.

600,000 Barrels A Day

Expanding the refinery took five years and $10 billion. At peak construction, there were more than 14,000 people working on the project. The result: A facility that was refining 280,000 barrels a day can now process 600,000 barrels a day. (About 15 million barrels of oil a day go into U.S. refineries.) "Besides just capacity increases, the main thing we're getting out of this is considerable flexibility," Pease says. This facility can refine all kinds of oil, including the heavy crude that Saudi Arabia produces. It also can tap into some of the less expensive oil currently produced in the middle of the U.S. and Canada At the other end of the refinery, there's also flexibility in where the gasoline is sold. It can end up in U.S. gas tanks, or it can be shipped from the Gulf Coast to wherever in the world it is most profitable to sell. That ability to export is bad news for U.S. drivers worried about gas prices. "Don't expect it to have any significant impact on the prices paid for gasoline at the pumps," says Neal Walters, vice president and partner in the energy practice at consulting firm A.T. Kearney.

U.S. A Net Exporter Of Gasoline

In recent years, the U.S. has become a net exporter of finished petroleum products, like gasoline and diesel. This refinery expansion will contribute to that trend. "It increases the capacity available to export and doesn't have, in the short term, any significant impact on the supply going into the United States," Walters says. It also continues a trend of smaller, regional refineries shutting down in favor of production from larger, more efficient refineries, like those on the Gulf Coast. While this refinery expansion may not reduce gasoline prices, oil prices have declined by more than 15 percent in just the past month. Amid economic concerns, traders are worried that oil demand will be lower than they expected. That has sent gasoline prices down nearly 20 cents a gallon this month.

By npr.org

June 3, 2012:

Coryton oil refinery influenced the songs of Wilko Johnson, who was a founder member and lead guitarist of Dr Feelgood. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian. A glowering mass of metal pipes and burnished towers, Coryton oil refinery has an ambivalent relationship with the neighbouring community of Canvey Island, across Holehaven creek. Residents campaigned successfully against further petrochemical installations in the 1970s, but Coryton has employed thousands of people from Canvey and the surrounding area in south Essex since it was built in 1953.

For one of Canvey's most famous sons, it has been an inspiration. Wilko Johnson was a founding member and lead guitarist of Dr Feelgood, the blues-soaked rock trailblazer for the punk explosion three decades ago. He says he will miss the threatened refinery as he stares at Coryton across the water, yards from where the band posed for its first photoshoot against the imposingthe industrial backdrop. "It is part of Canvey Island, even though it is across the creek. When you are trying to put the landscape into music, or lyrics, that refinery is what I am thinking of," says Johnson, who referenced Coryton in the opening line – "Stand and watch the towers burning at the break of day" – of All Through the City on Dr Feelgood's debut album, Down by the Jetty. In one of the most memorable sections of Oil City Confidential, the Julien Temple documentary about Dr Feelgood, Johnson quotes Paradise Lost – "darkness visible" – as he attempts to describe the influence of Coryton on his songwriting, the captivating sight of the refinery at dawn.

In daylight it is less dramatic, looking every inch a piece of infrastructure that urgently needs a refit and, with no wealthy buyers forthcoming, will be wound down from this week with the potential loss of up to 850 jobs. The 64-year-old Johnson, who left Dr Feelgood in the 70s and is now a solo artist, lives in nearby Southend. He says he will miss the plant if it shuts, though he fought against plans to build more refineries in the early 70s. "I would be sad. If it is going to be dismantled, whatever they put there they should bear in mind how marvellous that skyline is. If that goes, Canvey Island is going to lose its western horizon."

The greater impact, however, is economic, not cultural. Wayne Petty, a production operator at Coryton and an island resident, says his father and grandfather worked on the site. "I've lived on Canvey Island all my life, well and truly in the shadow of the refinery. It has in one way or another provided income to support my family at some point across three generations." Colleagues have similar links. "Like myself, there are many children of past and present employees who depend on the refinery for their income." Local businesses such as sandwich shops also rely on Coryton for their livelihoods.

In a statement last week the Department for Energy and Climate Change attempted to put a positive gloss on Coryton's imminent collapse, announcing with jarring optimism that the workforce was "highly skilled and well-positioned to take advantage of new opportunities". A spokesman added that a Jobcentre Plus "rapid response" service would help employees. "My job as an alkylation unit operator is extremely specialised, and there are many of my colleagues who have never done anything else," says Petty. "I think it's highly irresponsible of the government to ignore this fact and intimate that Coryton workers will easily find jobs elsewhere. There are certainly no other alkylation units in the area."

Some hope could be offered by the £1.5bn project taking shape behind Coryton, the London Gateway port and logistics park that will dominate the landscape when it opens next year, promising up to 12,000 jobs. Coryton's administrator, Stephen Pearson of PricewaterhouseCoopers, is optimistic the refinery can be reborn as a storage terminal, but that will require far fewer jobs, and not the specialist roles filled by Petty and his colleagues.

Refining converts crude oil into marketable products, top of the list being petrol and diesel. Pearson says in the four months he has been running Coryton, margins have been "very poor", a reflection of a market that has been hammered by competition from Asia. "One day the margins will be positive, and on another they will be negative," he says. "But throughout the period they have been lower on average than last year. And last year was a nadir." The weekend brought speculation that another main refinery in the UK, Milford Haven in Wales, will also shut because of the forces assailing the industry.

Coryton's rivals are sympathetic to a business that has been brought low by the bankruptcy of its parent, Petroplus. Volker Schultz, the chief executive of Essar Oil UK, owner of Stanlow refinery on the Wirral, says Coryton has been hit by a perfect storm. British drivers are using more fuel-efficient cars which has cut demand and there has been growing use of biofuels, which do not need refining. To compound this, big refineries being built in the Middle East and Asia – Essar is an Indian conglomerate – have created a glut in capacity. Shultz says: "In the north Atlantic basin [east US, UK and northern Europe] alone, you hear that 10 to 20 Corytons would have to shut down to get the north Atlantic market into a balanced state. There is quite a considerable amount of overcapacity." Johnson's music will be a timeless reminder of Coryton if, as expected, it goes. For the first time in more than 30 years, he drives up to the refinery gates – a long way from Canvey by road – and observes an installation that has dominated the area for half a century. "The closer you get, the uglier it gets," he says. "But just across the creek it is a thing of beauty … It pisses over the Pompidou centre."

By The Guardian

June 3, 2012:

LONDON -Murphy Oil Corp.'s refinery on the U.K.'s Pembrokeshire coast faces closure as its U.S. owner's search for a buyer has run into trouble, The Sunday Times reports. The newspaper said Murphy Chief Executive David Wood wants a resolution soon over the Milford Haven site, which has been up for sale for two years. Wood said, "In the absence of an acceptable offer we are evaluating the potential conversion of the facility into a storage terminal."

By The Wall Street Journal