Two U.S. Refineries Returning To Service After Emergency Outages
TotalEnergies’ Texas refinery in Port Arthur restarted on Friday, people familiar with the operations told Reuters.
The 238,000-barrel-per-day refinery has been shuttered since mid-January due to a power outage that triggered a malfunction at its gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker. Two crude distillation units and two vacuum distillation units were shuttered—those units convert crude oil into feedstock for the other units at the refinery.
The refinery also had units that failed to start up on time when 3-month maintenance was completed in November.
Also on Friday, BP’s Whiting refinery said that power had been restored to its 440,000 bpd refinery in Indiana, with operations in the process of resuming. That refinery had been shut down on Thursday, prompting flaring and an evacuation. As of Thursday, BP had given no indication of how long it would be before operations resumed, with uncertainties surrounding how long the power would be out. By Friday morning, however, BP indicated that operations would resume later in the day after it learned that power had been restored.
The Whiting refinery produces 238,000 bpd of gasoline and 95,000 bpd of diesel fuel, along with 48,000 bpd of jet fuel. It is also responsible for the production of 7% of all the asphalt consumed in the United States, BP said.
The Whiting refinery is the sixth-largest refinery in the United States and the largest refinery in the Midwest.
GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan said earlier that gasoline prices could spike due to the Whiting outage, to as much as 15 to 30 cents per gallon. AAA reported that gasoline prices rose to $3.154 per gallon from $3.150 per gallon on Thursday.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
TotalEnergies’ Texas refinery in Port Arthur restarted on Friday, people familiar with the operations told Reuters.
The 238,000-barrel-per-day refinery has been shuttered since mid-January due to a power outage that triggered a malfunction at its gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker. Two crude distillation units and two vacuum distillation units were shuttered—those units convert crude oil into feedstock for the other units at the refinery.
The refinery also had units that failed to start up on time when 3-month maintenance was completed in November.
Also on Friday, BP’s Whiting refinery said that power had been restored to its 440,000 bpd refinery in Indiana, with operations in the process of resuming. That refinery had been shut down on Thursday, prompting flaring and an evacuation. As of Thursday, BP had given no indication of how long it would be before operations resumed, with uncertainties surrounding how long the power would be out. By Friday morning, however, BP indicated that operations would resume later in the day after it learned that power had been restored.
The Whiting refinery produces 238,000 bpd of gasoline and 95,000 bpd of diesel fuel, along with 48,000 bpd of jet fuel. It is also responsible for the production of 7% of all the asphalt consumed in the United States, BP said.
The Whiting refinery is the sixth-largest refinery in the United States and the largest refinery in the Midwest.
GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan said earlier that gasoline prices could spike due to the Whiting outage, to as much as 15 to 30 cents per gallon. AAA reported that gasoline prices rose to $3.154 per gallon from $3.150 per gallon on Thursday.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
Power Outage Shuts Down BP Refinery in Indiana
A power outage has prompted the shutdown of the Whiting refinery in Indiana. The facility is operated by BP, which evacuated the facility on Thursday and started flaring gas to avoid more serious problems.
Volatile gases are flared during a refinery shutdown because they cannot be processed the usual way and present a hazard.
"This flaring is a safety release to burn off the extra product and is a normal process during an event,” the Whiting City authorities said in a statement quoted by NBC Chicago. “BP is working to resolve the power outage as quickly as possible."
The company itself said "We are in the process of safely shutting down the refinery after a suspected power outage."
"We have activated our emergency response team and evacuated refinery office buildings out of an abundance of caution,” Christina Audisho, a spokesperson for BP, told the news outlet. "Local fire departments are assisting with the evacuation by closing nearby roads. The safety of refinery staff and the community are our highest priority."
BP has not given any indication as to how long the shutdown will continue. The Whiting refinery has the capacity to process 435,000 barrels of crude daily. The facility is the largest refinery in the Midwest and BP’s largest in North America, per Reuters.
According to energy consultancy Refined Fuel Analytics’ managing director, the shutdown could last as little as a week but there is no certainty.
"Restarting depends on how quickly you can restore power and if you have any damage," John Auers told Reuters, adding that "You can manage power outages but it’s very complex. You don't have instrumentation when you lose power, so you don't know what's going on in the units
The last time the Whiting refinery was shut down by an incident was back in 2022, when a fire broke out on the territory of the facility, prompting the temporary suspension of operations.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
Embattled Phillips 66 Close Oklahoma Pipeline After Fire, Rupture
Less than a month after news that Phillips 66 was discussing the sale of some of its assets, the company has been forced to shut down a section of a natural gas pipeline due to a fire.
The natural gas pipeline in the Oklahoma Panhandle ruptured after a fire on Tuesday, with Phillips 66 saying in a Wednesday statement that the fire had been extinguished and the cause of the incident was under investigation, Reuters reports.
No injuries or threats to nearby residences have been reported, and the company said that multiple fire and law enforcement agencies had responded to the fire, according to Reuters.
WSAZ news cited the Elmwood Fire Department as saying that some 13 miles of the pipeline must now be drained due to the rupture, with the surrounding areas closed to the public as the investigation into the cause of the explosion that led to the fire continues.
This is the third such incident at Phillips 66 assets in less than a year. Earlier in January, a fire broke out at one of the company’s refineries in New Jersey, and last year, six people were injured in a fire at a Texas refinery.
In early January, the Houston-based refiner said it was actively discussing the sale of $3 billion in non-core assets this year in an effort to cut costs and boost returns. There was no fixed timeline given for the sale, with CEO Mark Lashier saying there was no “sense of urgency”.
Phillips saw its profits plunge 46% in the second quarter of 2023, and while Q3 brought better news, numbers still failed to live up to analyst expectations, despite the fact that refinery utilization was at a years-long high of 95%.
That underperformance led to the $1-billion share purchase by activist investor Elliott Investment Management in November, during which time the company was criticized for soaring operating expenses.
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