Oil and gas processing news: USA and Canada

Canada

Irving Oil Corp.’s Saint John refinery in New Brunswick has delayed work scheduled for October until February.

Work on a fluid catalytic cracker and other units will last approximately 12 weeks.

The Saint John refinery is Canada’s largest, with a capacity of 298 800 bpd. The refinery delayed the project due to unplanned work that arose in July.

USA

California

Spot gasoline in San Francisco weakened for the third consecutive day as Tesoro Corp. said the Golden Eagle refinery in Northern California was running normally after repairs.

The 170 000 bpd refinery had been performing planned maintenance since last week.

The Carbob broadened 4.5 cents to 11.5 cents/gal. versus futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 3.56pm New York time, the lowest level for this season since 2008.

Carbob in Los Angeles weakened for a second day, dropping 1 cent to 6.5 cents below futures. The premium for Carbob in Southern California versus the same fuel in San Francisco widened 3.5 cents to 5 cents/gal., the biggest in more than three weeks.

Louisiana

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality said it fined Exxon Mobil Corp. for violations at a Baton Rouge refinery and other facilities.

Regulators inspecting the refinery complex and other state sites discovered a series of violations they said occurred between 2008 and 2013.

The DEQ said it approved a settlement agreement with Exxon for more than US$ 2.3 million to resolve the violations.

Under the terms of the deal, Exxon needs to develop a spill prevention plan and spend at least US$ 1 million on improvements at the Baton Rouge facility.

Texas

Delek US Holdings Inc. plans to shut an alkylation unit at the Tyler refinery in Texas in order to carry out maintenance operations.

It is anticipated that the work will last five to six weeks.

Also in Texas, CVR Refining, LP have announced that the fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) at its Coffeyville refinery is expected to remain offline until mid September due to additional necessary repairs.

As a result of the FCCU outage, total crude throughputs for the Coffeyville and Wynnewood refineries in the 2013 third quarter are expected to be between 145 000 bpd and 155 000 bpd.

The FCCU outage will not affect the previously announced CVR refining distribution outlook.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/28082013/downstream_news_update_usa_canada599/