Motiva, Valero restart East Texas refineries after Storm Edouard, sources say (updated)
UPDATE 1-Motiva, Valero restart East Texas refineries after Storm Edouard, sources say Adds details about unit restart, outage and background from paragraph 3 onwards
By Erwin Seba
HOUSTON, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Motiva Enterprises [RIC:RIC:MOTIV.UL] restarted the gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) shut by Tropical Storm Edouard at its 656,400 barrel-per-day Port Arthur, Texas refinery on Wednesday, people familiar with plant operations said.
Valero Energy Corp VLO.N also began restarting a small crude distillation unit (CDU) after power was restored to the south side of its 385,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Port Arthur refinery, people familiar with operations said.
Neither Motiva nor Valero replied to Reuters requests for a comment.
Motiva's Port Arthur plant is its sole U.S. refinery and the country's largest by crude processing capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The FCCU, which converts gas oil from the refinery's three CDUs into unfinished gasoline, has a capacity of 81,000 bpd but was operating at 73,000 bpd on Wednesday, the Motiva sources said.
The refinery's delayed coking unit 1 (DCU 1) was operating at full capacity, or 57,000 bpd, they said.
The 18,000-bpd alkylation unit, which converts refining byproducts into an octane-boosting gasoline blendstock, was on circulation and not producing alkylate, the sources said.
The 90,000-bpd VPS-2, vacuum distillation unit (VDU), was not yet operating, they said.
CDUs operate at atmospheric pressure and send residual crude to the VDUs, which operate under vacuum to increase the yield from a barrel of crude.
In a notice filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Wednesday, Valero said a loss of power from its third-party provider caused the refinery outage.
After the smaller CDU, AVU-147, completes its restart, the refinery plans to bring its larger CDU, AVU-146, back to full production, followed by two diesel-producing hydrocrackers and two cokers.
Hydrocrackers use a catalyst under high heat and pressure in the presence of hydrogen to convert gas oil into diesel fuel.
Cokers take residual crude from VDUs and extract feedstocks for motor fuels. The remaining residual crude is converted into petroleum coke, a coal substitute.
Valero's Port Arthur refinery is its largest, with total hydrocracking capacity of 134,800 bpd and coking capacity of 161,000 bpd.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba, Editing by Franklin Paul and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
((erwin.seba@thomsonreuters.com; +1 832 746 4269))