Harvey having a big impact on refiners
Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2017 1:56 pm
Harvey slammed into Louisiana this morning.
As the Texas-Louisiana border area braces for severe flooding as Harvey made landfall earlier this morning, oil analyst Andy Lipow says refineries potentially could face 6-8 weeks of outages.
"I'm actually quite concerned about Beaumont-Port Arthur because they just got a huge amount of rain in 24 hours, and we've already seen flooding within the refineries themselves, so we don't know exactly how bad it's going to be," Lipow says.
Saudi Aramco-owned Motiva began a controlled shutdown of its 603K bbl/day Port Arthur facility
Exxon Mobil (XOM -0.2%) has closed its 363K bbl/day Beaumont refinery
Valero (VLO +0.7%) and (TOT -0.7%) also suspended operations at refineries in the area.
At Lake Charles, La., Citgo and Phillips 66 already are operating their area facilities at reduced capacities
Lipow says Houston plants appeared to suffer minimal damage but were producing very few products because their access to crude oil is limited, adding that it could take refiners in the area 14-17 days to fully recover.
Inventories of refined products will be falling over the next few weeks and refiners will be forced to stay near maximum throughput capacity longer this year before they can switch to producing more heating oil.
As the Texas-Louisiana border area braces for severe flooding as Harvey made landfall earlier this morning, oil analyst Andy Lipow says refineries potentially could face 6-8 weeks of outages.
"I'm actually quite concerned about Beaumont-Port Arthur because they just got a huge amount of rain in 24 hours, and we've already seen flooding within the refineries themselves, so we don't know exactly how bad it's going to be," Lipow says.
Saudi Aramco-owned Motiva began a controlled shutdown of its 603K bbl/day Port Arthur facility
Exxon Mobil (XOM -0.2%) has closed its 363K bbl/day Beaumont refinery
Valero (VLO +0.7%) and (TOT -0.7%) also suspended operations at refineries in the area.
At Lake Charles, La., Citgo and Phillips 66 already are operating their area facilities at reduced capacities
Lipow says Houston plants appeared to suffer minimal damage but were producing very few products because their access to crude oil is limited, adding that it could take refiners in the area 14-17 days to fully recover.
Inventories of refined products will be falling over the next few weeks and refiners will be forced to stay near maximum throughput capacity longer this year before they can switch to producing more heating oil.