MOSCOW (MRC) -- Exxon Mobil said it still expects to be able to meet contractual commitments while work to normalize operations at its Torrance refinery in California continues, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The 150,000 bpd refinery was hit by an external power disruption that resulted in unplanned flaring. The incident didn't cause injuries to Exxon Mobil employees or contractors, company spokeswoman Gesuina Paras.
All non-essential personnel were evacuated as a safety precaution, and the Torrance Fire Department was on-site to work with Exxon Mobil personnel to safely manage the incident, Ms. Paras added.
"There is no impact to production," Ms. Paras said.
The company in early May said the refinery would conduct "several weeks" of planned maintenance at several process units. In mid May Exxon Mobil said the turnaround maintenance would be performed on a crude distillation unit, a coker unit, one of the plant's hydrogen units, a sulfur recover unit, and an alkylation unit. It hasn't commented on more recent reports of unit start ups, however.
As MRC informed previously, ExxonMobil said on Thursday it had started ethylene production at a new chemical unit in Singapore after expansion. With the start-up of the steam cracker, the company will increase production at other petrochemical units in the Singapore complex over the next few weeks. Ethylene is a feedstock for producing polymers (PE and PP) used in plastics production.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3 percent of the world's oil and about 2 percent of the world's energy.
MRC