September 1, 2012:

A union report says the closure and conversion of the Caltex refinery at Kurnell in Sydney will pose environmental risks and cost the local community 70 million dollar a year in lost wages. Caltex announced in July that it would close the petrol refinery in the second half of 2014 following recent major financial losses. The existing facilities will be turned into a transport fuel import facility. The Australian Workers Union released a report today reviewing the risks associated with the conversion, including the dismantling and clean-up of parts of the refinery and the expansion of import facilities. The report highlights potential impacts including more trucks on local roads, a higher risk of fire and explosions, industrial contamination, oil spills and potential environmental damage to Botany Bay.

By Sky News

September 1, 2012:

Operations resumed Friday at the Amuay refinery where an explosion set off a raging fire and killed 42 people and injured more than 150 others, Venezuela's state oil company announced. The accident had paralyzed work at the oil installation in western Venezuela since the huge explosion early Saturday, which authorities blamed on a gas leak. Amuay is one of the largest refineries in the world and is part of state-run PDVSA's Paraguana Refining Center, which includes the adjacent Cardon refinery. "Operational activities have resumed safely and gradually" at Amuay, said Paraguana general manager Jesus Luongo, who is also director of PDVSA Refining. He said the refinery was ramping up output, initially processing 160,000 barrels on Friday. Venezuelan officials had initially said the refinery would be back in operation within two days, but later said it would be two days after fires were put out. In the end, the last fire was extinguished Tuesday and it took about three days for production to resume. Together, the refineries in the complex can process about 900,000 barrels of crude per day. The disaster has prompted questions about whether Petroleos de Venezuela SA has neglected maintenance while funneling its revenues into social programs run by President Hugo Chavez's socialist government. A document published Thursday by two national Venezuelan newspapers said that months before the explosion, a study by engineers had found failures in the complex's maintenance and listed dozens of accidents. The report, which was also obtained by The Associated Press, was prepared in March by RJG Risk Engineering for the international insurance company QBE.  The study said there had been 222 accidents at the Paraguana Refining Center last year. It said 100 of those involved fires, and 60 were breaks and leaks in pipes that carry combustible liquids.

Javier Larranaga, a former manager at the refinery complex who was fired in 2003 along with thousands of others from PDVSA, said the account of 222 accidents last year was extremely high. He said that when he worked there, there were typically fewer than five accidents a year. Critics have said that in addition to refinery failures from delayed maintenance, PDVSA's operations have also suffered from the firing of nearly 18,000 oil workers in 2003, about 45 percent of the payroll, after they joined a strike called by Chavez's political opponents to press demands that the president resign. In recent years, Chavez's government has increasingly used a share of earnings from PDVSA to bankroll social programs known as "missions." Its contributions to such programs rose from less than $1.6 billion in 2004 to $10.4 billion last year. Pressure on PDVSA to generate funds for programs that shore up Chavez's political support has led to a "deterioration that PDVSA has had in its refining activities," Asdrubal Oliveros, an economist and director of the consulting firm Ecoanalitica, said this week. He said PDVSA has concentrated bigger investments in oil production to prevent output from slumping "but has neglected other activities, among them refining." Government officials counter that PDVSA has invested $6 billion in maintaining refineries over the past five years.

In other countries, such a refinery disaster would likely bring higher costs at the pump for customers. But Venezuela has for decades offered its citizens highly subsidized gasoline at the cheapest prices in the world: about 9 U.S. cents per gallon (2 U.S. cents per liter). Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez has said Venezuela has plenty of fuel on hand to meet domestic demand in the aftermath of the disaster and won't have to increase imports, but he has not discussed the possible financial impacts for the state oil company.

By abc News

September 1, 2012:

Nigerian oil and gas firm Orient Petroleum said it would begin operating a new refinery in south-eastern Anambra state by the end of next year which will process an initial 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil. Nigeria is among the world's top 10 crude oil exporters but has to import most of its refined product needs due to the dilapidated state of its refineries. Previous efforts to build new refineries have often been delayed or canceled. Africa's biggest oil producer currently has a theoretical refining capacity of 445,000 bpd from its four plants but they process around 30 percent of this amount, oil industry sources have said. "Our expectation is that the refinery will be up and running by the end of next year," Orient Chairman Emeka Anyaoku said at the inauguration of the project. "We expect that by the end of next year we should be refining 20,000 barrels of oil everyday and gradually after that we will build up to 35,000 then 55,000 and possibly higher." Orient is exploring for oil in Anambra state, which sits north of the main oil producing Niger Delta region, but there have been no official oil reserve figures published. The company's website said it will refine crude oil produced from Anambra state and Brass River oil, which is currently pumped from fields operated by Italian firm Eni (ENI.MI).

By Reuters

September 1, 2012:

Exxon Mobil Corp's joint-venture 192,500 barrel per day (bpd) Chalmette, Louisiana, refinery began restarting on Friday after being shut due to the threat of Hurricane Isaac, according to a notice the refinery filed with federal pollution regulators. "The facility is starting up after being shut down for the hurricane," according to the notice filed with the U.S. National Response Center. The Chalmette refinery, located on the east side of New Orleans, is a 50-50 joint venture between Exxon and Venezuela's national oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Exxon is the operating partner.

By Reuters

September 1, 2012:

The U.S. Gulf Coast's energy producers moved to restart refineries and restart platforms Friday as Tropical Depression Isaac petered out over the Mississippi River Valley. Nearly all of the oil production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's federal waters remained offline, however. Production of 1.3 million barrels a day of oil, or 95% of the region's total, was shut in, a level similar to the one seen Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Friday. Offshore natural-gas outages decreased slightly to 3.1 billion cubic feet a day, or 68% of the region's normal production, down from 3.3 billion cubic feet a day on Thursday. Producers are expected to bring significant amounts of production back on-line by the end of the long weekend. Royal Dutch Shell PLC's (RDSA, RDSA.LN) U.S. unit, which began fully restaffing all of its central U.S. Gulf of Mexico operations on Friday and will continue in other areas on Saturday, said going back to the production levels seen before the storm would take between three and five days, depending on the readiness of processing and transportation infrastructure. With early reports indicating the storm caused little major infrastructure damage, the storm "should be a one-week blip in terms of products and crude numbers," said Kyle Cooper, managing director of IAF Energy Advisors in Houston. BP PLC (BP, BP.LN), the Gulf's largest energy producer, said it is redeploying staff to offshore facilities, and will start producing oil and gas there in the coming days. The company said aerial surveys showed no damage from Isaac, but crews will perform closer inspections when they return. Chevron Corp. (CVX) began redeploying personnel offshore and restoring production "where it is safe to do so," the company said in a statement.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) said it has started the process of restaffing platforms in the eastern and central Gulf of Mexico that were evacuated ahead of Isaac. Employees will conduct on-site inspections at five platforms Friday, after remote-monitoring systems indicated all the company's facilities were intact. The company said it expects to restart production as pipeline and infrastructure availability allows. BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP, BHP.AU) unit BHP Billiton Petroleum said it began restaffing its Gulf of Mexico production platforms Friday. "Production will resume as soon as possible," a spokesman said. The U.S. Department of Energy said Friday some 878,000 barrels of refining capacity remained shut down, as four refineries in the area remained closed and five were operating at a reduced rate. Two refineries--Motiva Enterprises LLC's 235,000-barrel-a-day Convent, La., refinery and Placid Refining's 57,000-barrel-a-day facility in Port Allen, La., were in the process of restarting, the DOE said. Also, the DOE said Friday that it provided an emergency loan of one million barrels of sweet crude oil to Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) to address the short-term impact of the hurricane on its refining capacity. The crude oil will come from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve's Bayou Choctaw site in Louisiana, and will be repaid with interest in three months, the DOE said. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the loan, requested by Marathon Thursday, is part of a "broader federal effort to respond to those impacted by Hurricane Isaac."

Marathon said Friday its Garyville, La., refinery suffered no significant damage and has continued to operate at reduced rates. The facility, however, "did receive a large amount of rainfall," the company said. Marathon plans to operate the facility at a reduced rate until "the normal crude supply logistics return," a spokesman said in a statement. Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) said maintenance crews are in the process of assessing the Louisiana refineries it had shut down, but the facilities aren't yet up and running. Employees will return over the weekend to begin the process of restarting operations at the 125,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Meraux and the 205,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Norco, in St. Charles Parish. Valero spokesman Bill Day said there isn't yet a timetable for restarting work. "We should have a better idea this weekend," he said. Mr. Day had said Thursday that initial inspections didn't reveal anything more than minor wind damage to the refineries.

Valero's 180,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Memphis, Tenn., which had to reduce its rates due to the closing of the 1.2-million-barrel-a-day Capline Pipeline bringing crude oil from the Gulf Coast, will now ramp up to planned rates because the pipeline reopened. Phillips 66's (PSX) Alliance refinery in Belle Chasse, La., remained shut down and without power. The 247,000-barrel-a-day facility had some floodwater, though it is receding, a company spokesman said. Chevron's Pascagoula refinery in Mississippi continues to operate, running at reduced rates "for precautionary reasons only," waiting for the nearby ship channel and maritime transportation to return to normal, Chevron said.  The DOE Friday said about 638,617 electricity customers were without power in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

By Dow Jones Newswires