June 1, 2012:

Unions and MEP Richard Howitt said keeping Coryton refinery open was in the national interest as it supplies 20% of the South East's fuel. The refinery faces closure with the loss of hundreds of jobs after the collapse of its Swiss parent company. But the government has rejected the idea of using public money to support the plant. Tony Burke, assistant general secretary of Unite, warned the closure of Coryton could lead to fuel prices rising.

'Jobs will be lost'

He said: "Not only will Coryton's closure rip the heart out of the community, it will also further undermine the UK's already fragile refining industry. "The national economy relies on oil and the security and continuity of its supply. "It is simply too important to fall victim to speculators and the whim of the market." Mr Howitt said: "News the former Petroplus refinery in Germany is to be sold means that three out of five of the bankrupt company's refineries in Europe are already saved.  "The French plant has been given millions of pounds of their government's money to stay open. "The administrators told us that an equity arrangement by government could still be a sound basis to strike a deal with interested parties."

The Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "We do not believe that keeping the refinery open with public money is the best solution for a long-term sustainable future for the plant. "The difficulties faced by the administrator reflect overcapacity in the European refining sector, indeed a number of refineries have closed across Europe in recent years. With such overcapacity, it would simply not be sustainable to prop up the refinery with taxpayers' money. "We want to reassure people that there will not be any impact on fuel supply from the closure of the refinery. "Government is working with local partners to address the implications of the announcement for the local workforce."

By BBC NEWS

June 1, 2012:

Motiva Enterprises LLC had to adjust its strategy for the $10 billion expansion of the Port Arthur, Texas, refinery because of a boom in U.S. oil production, Bob Pease, the company’s chief executive officer, said. Pease, Saudi Arabian Oil Co. CEO Khalid Al-Falih and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) CEO Peter Voser were all in Port Arthur today to show off the expanded plant, which more than doubled capacity to 600,000 barrels a day. When the company started the project in 2007, U.S. fuel demand was increasing while production was decreasing. An economic downturn and increased production from U.S. shale fields reversed those trends. Pease said the expanded plant can run a wide range of crudes so that it can use whatever oil can be processed most profitably. The expansion included a 75,000-barrel-a-day hydrocracker that can quickly shift from making gasoline to diesel, depending on which fuel is most valuable at the moment.

“The world has changed dramatically in five years, but we built the right plant for it,” he said. Early testing indicates that the plant will probably be able to run above its capacity of 600,000 barrels a day, Pease said. Motiva would need a new permit from the state to expand output, he said.

Joint Venture

Motiva is a refining and marketing joint venture of units of Shell and Saudi Arabian Oil Co., also known as Saudi Aramco. Formed in 1998, Motiva has two refineries in south Louisiana in addition to the Port Arthur plant. The three refineries now have a combined capacity of 1.1 million barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. There will probably be synergies among the three facilities, Pease said. Port Arthur won’t be able to produce all the heavy residual oil it needs to run its coker at full capacity, he said. The Convent, Louisiana, refinery doesn’t have a coker, so it could send leftover residual fuel oil to Port Arthur to be converted into more valuable lighter products. The Port Arthur refinery has available land for further expansion, Pease said. “There’s room for it,” he said. “It’s not in our immediate plans, but I don’t think our owners would rule out anything.” Pease spent his early career in various technical refinery positions. He moved on to leadership roles and was president of Shell Trading Co. before becoming Houston-based Motiva’s chief executive in November 2008.

By Bloomberg

June 1, 2012:

A BP refinery in Washington state that shut down after a February fire has resumed normal operations. BP spokesman Scott Dean in Chicago said Thursday that repairs and maintenance were completed in May at the Cherry Point refinery near Blaine. The three-month outage has been cited as one reason that gasoline prices have been higher on the West Coast than the rest of the nation. But other factors also go into the price of gasoline, including increased demand for summer driving. BP Cherry Point is the third-largest refinery on the West Coast. It produces 20 percent of Washington's gasoline needs and supplies the majority of jet fuel for Sea-Tac, Portland and Vancouver, British Columbia, airports.

The refinery was hit by a fire Feb. 17.

By Bloomberg

June 1, 2012:

Motiva, the joint venture between Shell and Saudi Aramco, marked the completion of a five-year construction project that more than doubled the daily processing capacity of the Motiva Refinery in Port Arthur, Texas to 600,000 barrels of crude. (Earlier post.) Motiva Port Arthur now ranks as the US’ largest refinery and one of the largest in the world. The Crude Expansion Project (CEP) added an additional 325,000 bpd capacity. The expanded refinery can process a wide variety of crude oils, ranging from relatively light to heavy. It also has the flexibility to switch between primarily producing gasoline and diesel to adapt to varying market conditions.

Additional production from CEP includes:

    > 6.0 million gallons/day gasoline

    > 3.4 million gallons/day of ultra low sulfur diesel

    1.3 million gallons/day jet fuel

    8,000 tons/day petroleum coke

    1,050 tons/day sulfur

    LPG (8,000 bpd), propylene (5,000 bpd), butane (3,000 bpd), iso butane (1,500 bpd)

Major units of the CEP include:

 VPS5/SGP. The unit is designed to process 325,000 bpd (325 MBPD) of crude. The unit consists of an Atmospheric and Vacuum Section. Light ends-Naphtha is processed in the Saturates Gas Plant which is integrated on the VPS plot. Products include avjet distillate, diesel distillate, heavy atmospheric gas oil, medium vacuum gas oil, heavy vacuum gas oil, and vacuum residuum.

DCU2. The purpose of the Delayed Coker is to process the vacuum residue from VPS 5 to make higher valued distillate products. The six-drum unit is based on ConocoPhillips ThruPlus Coking Process. In addition to vacuum residue, the unit will serve to reprocess several refinery streams: recovered oil, refinery wastes, and FCCU heavy cycle oil. The DCU is rated at 95 MBPD of feed. The Delayed Coker products are treated gas for refinery fuel, treated propane/propylene for petrochemical feedstock, treated mixed butylenes for alkylation feed, full-range coker naphtha, light gas oil, heavy gas oil, and petroleum coke.

HCU/DHT. HCU2 is an integrated 75 MBPD hydrocracking unit with a 60 MBPD distillate hydrotreating section. The HCU section consists of two first stage reactors operating in parallel ultimately feeding into a recovery section that serves to produce product and recycle feed to the second stage, which also returns to the same fractionator for product recovery. Feeds to the HCU include heavy coker gas oil from both DCUs, extracts from the lube operations and medium vacuum gas oil from VPS5. Products are a hydrogen-rich stream, a treated fuel gas, a mixed propane-butane stream, light and heavy naphtha, light and heavy ULSD, and unconverted oil for FCCU feed.

 The DHT section is designed to produce ULSD as the primary product but does generate lighter than diesel material from side reactions at higher reactor temperatures. Feedstocks include diesel from the VPS5, light Coker gas oil, and light cycle gas oil. It shares some equipment with the hydrocracking section.

NPC. The Naphtha Processing Complex consists of four units: NHTU2—a Hydrotreating section rated at 113 MBPD, Naphtha Splitter, Penex—50 MBPD C5/C6 Isomerization, and CRU5 —85 MBPD UOP continuous regeneration catalytic reforming unit. The NPC is designed to hydrotreat, fractionate, improve octane and limit the benzene content of a blend of naphthas received from the CEP and base plant. The main product streams from the NPC include: C5/C6 isomerate, C4 and lighter, high octane reformate and hydrogen for internal PAR consumption.

CFH. The “Cat Feed Hydrotreater” is licensed by SGS. The design rate is 50 MBPD of vacuum gas oil streams from VPS5. Its primary product is low sulfur FCCU feed. Fuel gas, naphtha and diesel are co-products. A PSA for upgrading CRU produced hydrogen will be located at the CFH.

Sulfur Recovery Complex. The sulfur recovery complex consists of: three sulfur recovery units, three tail gas treating units, two amine regeneration units, and two sour water strippers. The sulfur recovery units (SRU) will process amine acid gas and sour water acid gas. The three units combined are capable of producing 1050 LTPD of sulfur on air. With oxygen enrichment, two units will be able to carry the load without curtailing the CEP units. Each sulfur recovery unit configuration includes a three-stage Claus unit, equipped with ammonia destruction systems, followed by a SCOT Tail Gas Treating Unit and sulfur collecting pit and a licensed Shell sulfur degasification system. The sulfur recovery unit is required to achieve a sulfur recovery efficiency of 99.3% for total feed to the sulfur recovery unit.

PS4. PS4 consists of four GE Frame 6B Gas Turbogenerators (GTG) with independent heat recovery steam generators (HRSG). Each GTG will produce 36.5 MW at 13.8 kV and its respective HRSG will generate 400 MPPH of steam at 1500 psig utilizing supplemental firing. Voltage will be increased to 69 kV for distribution. A stand-alone power boiler rated at 400 MPPH will provide steam at 1500 psig.

Motiva’s marketing operations support a network of approximately 8,300 Shell-branded gasoline stations in the eastern and southern United States. Company assets include three refineries located in Norco and Convent, LA., as well as Port Arthur, Texas, which are currently capable of refining more than 1 million barrels of crude oil per day. Motiva also has ownership or partial interests in 38 product terminals.

By Green Car Congress

June 1, 2012:

North Dakota's sole oil refinery at Mandan plans a two-week shutdown this month to bring online an expansion project that will bump the factory's capacity by 10,000 barrels a day, a petroleum marketing official said. Mike Rud, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Marketers Association, said Tesoro Corp. officials notified fuel marketers this week that the plant would halt production in early June to launch the $35 million expansion. Tesoro said it will increase the refinery's output to 68,000 barrels a day. A barrel is 42 gallons. Rud doesn't expect any fuel shortages during the outage.

"We're not overly concerned with the two-week shutdown," Rud said. "We feel pretty comfortable we have enough product to get us through this period." Tesoro announced the expansion in March 2011 to capitalize on record production from the Bakken and Three Forks formations in western North Dakota. The San Antonio-based company said at the time that it planned to finish the project by the second quarter of this year. "We are nearing the completion of our North Dakota refinery expansion," Tesoro spokeswoman Tina Barbee said Thursday. She would not comment on a shutdown or when it might happen, citing "understandable propriety and competitive reasons."

The refinery, which occupies about 1 1/2 square miles of land overlooking the Missouri River, was built in 1954, three years after drillers began pumping oil in North Dakota. Tesoro acquired the refinery from BP in 2001. Crude is shipped via pipeline from the Williston Basin in Montana and North Dakota to supply the refinery, which converts it to gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, propane, butane and residual fuel. The bulk of the refinery's products are shipped through pipelines to eastern North Dakota and Minnesota and sold to customers in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Gasoline typically makes up about 60 percent of the refinery's production. About 80 percent of the diesel and 35 percent of the gasoline produced at the refinery stays in North Dakota, the company has said. Work also is under way at the Mandan refinery to boost diesel production by 5,000 barrels per day, to 22,000 barrels by the end of 2013. That project, announced in December, is being done in response to growing diesel demand in the region, Tesoro said.

State Tax Department records show North Dakota's diesel fuel consumption has risen 51 percent since 2007, and the oil industry has since replaced agriculture as the biggest user of diesel in the state. The Petroleum Marketers Association has estimated more than 1 billion gallons was used last year in North Dakota, largely powering the trucks and trains needed to move crude oil and materials in and out of the state's booming oil patch. Separately, Tesoro's $60 million rail shipping project to move crude oil from western North Dakota to its refinery in Anacortes, Wash., is ahead of schedule, said Barbee, the company spokeswoman. The project was expected to be completed late this year but may begin shipping 30,000 barrels daily by September, Barbee said. The project could be expanded to 50,000 barrels a day, she said.

Tesoro operates seven refineries in the U.S., with a combined capacity of about 665,000 barrels a day, Barbee said.

By Bloomberg