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Feb 22 (Reuters) – Refineries on the Texas coastline on the Gulf of Mexico are reactivated rapidly after last week’s winter storm that shut down processing of petrochemicals and fuels in the state, where the lowest temperatures were recorded. in the area in a generation.
The extreme cold wave left millions of people in Texas without power and crippled nearly a quarter of America’s refining capacity.
The effect of the storm was almost as brutal as the passage of Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and also added difficulties due to the freezing of the natural gas and water pipelines that complicated the tasks to reactivate the complexes.
The largest refinery in the United States, Motiva Enterprises, which has the capacity to operate 607,000 barrels of oil per day from Port Arthur, submitted a document to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) about its 17-day restart plan on Monday.
Sources close to the operations said the refinery must repair water lines at the plant that froze and ruptured when temperatures dropped below freezing a week ago.
The Marathon Petroleum Corp refinery, located in Galveston Bay and with the capacity to process 585,000 bpd, resumed the cogeneration phase, which produces electricity and steam, according to sources familiar with the operations.
Processing lines and water pipelines at the refinery are in need of repair, the sources said.
Exxon Mobil Corp began an attempt to restart its 560,500 bpd capacity plant in Baytown, Texas. External power lines to the complex have already been restored over the weekend, according to industry sources.
Meanwhile, the Beaumont refinery, with the capacity to process 369,024 bpd, will resume operations on Sunday, the company said. (Reported by Swati Verma in Bengaluru and Erwin Seba in Houston. Edited in Spanish by Marion Giraldo)
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