Early March: Americas downstream news

Brazil

Brazil’s government is looking to Chinese firms to help finish work at two refineries in the country. Petrobras is looking to negotiate a partnership with Sinopec surrounding two diesel refineries that it is hoping to build in the north eastern part of Brazil by 2018.

California

After maintenance started at the BP owned Carson refinery in January this year, the FCCU and octane producing alkylation unit are now in restart mode. After a maintenance period of 6 weeks, a restart attempt of these units failed and this is the second attempt. A possible flaring notice has been filed with local environmental regulation authorities.

Hawaii

Tesoro Corp. expects to layoff 210 workers when it shuts down the Kapolei refinery in May this year. The facility is going to be converted in to an import, storage and distribution terminal. Jobs are likely to be terminated during a 14 day period beginning 1^st May.

Indiana

CountryMark is going to spend US$ 18 million on new pollution controls at its refineries. This investment is being made to settle Clean Air Act violations. The money will mainly be spent on improving flares at its Mount Vernon facility.

North Dakota

MDU Resources and Calumet Speciality Products Partners LD have announced that they are to form a joint venture and build a diesel refinery. The joint venture will be called Dakota Prairie Refining LLC and is looking to invest US$ 300 million in the new facility which may be operable as early as 2014.

Pennsylvania

Delta Air Lines Inc. has announced that it expects to produce approximately 40 000 bpd of jet fuel by the end of the year at its Trainer refinery. The facility has a total processing capacity of 185 000 bpd. The jet fuel figure is lower than its original goal.

Edited from various sources by Claira Lloyd

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/06032013/early_march_2013_americas_downstream_news/