MOSCOW (MRC) -- Most of the nine Louisiana refineries shut by Hurricane Ida have restarted or were restarting, nearly two weeks after the powerful storm came ashore, a Reuters survey showed, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Refiners are coming back faster than oil production, a reverse of past storm recoveries. Just three of the nine refineries were completely idled, accounting for about 7% of Gulf Coast refining, compared to shut-ins of two-thirds of oil output.
Valero Energy Corp’s Meraux refinery on the Mississippi River east of New Orleans was restarting units on Friday, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Valero also is preparing its St. Charles refinery to restart, the company has said.
Royal Dutch Shell’s Norco refinery was receiving limited power on Friday, and is planning to begin restarting in one to two weeks, according to company reports and people close to the company.
PBF Energy’s Chalmette refinery has restarted some units but has not resumed production, sources told Reuters.The state's two largest refineries - Marathon Petroleum’s 578,000 barrel per day (bpd) Garyville and Exxon Mobil Corp's 520,000 bpd Baton Rouge plant - have returned to operation, the companies said on Friday.
Exxon is operating its two gasoline-producing units at maximum capacity, said people familiar with plant operations. It has received 3 million barrels of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
The hardest hit refinery, Phillips 66’s 255,600 bpd Alliance plant in Belle Chasse, faces months of repairs that could rival those needed after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, sources familiar with the situation said.
It was continuing to pump water out of the refinery on Friday, the sources said. Phillips 66 had repaired a broken flood wall that allowed storm waters to enter the plant, a spokesperson said.
Two other refineries: Placid Refining's 75,000-bpd Port Allen refinery and Delek US Holdings' 80,000-bpd plant in Krotz Springs restarted early this week. Placid has received 300,000 barrels of crude oil from the SPR.
As MRC informed earlier, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, one of the largest operators in the Gulf of Mexico, declared force majeure on some oil deliveries due to damage from Hurricane Ida, which has crippled U.S. offshore oil production. More than three-quarters of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's offshore oil output remained shut following Ida. Crude buyers said the full restart of production remained unclear due to extensive damage to various facilities. The hurricane was one of the most devastating for offshore producers since back-to-back storms in 2005 cut output for months.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,176,860 tonnes in the first half of 2021, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of exclusively low density polyethylene (LDPE) decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 727,160 tonnes in the first six months of 2021, up by 31% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased. Supply of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) subsided.
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