A strike that began on Monday at a large Chevron Corp oil refinery outside San Francisco will not add to record fuel prices as long as replacement workers remain at the facility's controls, reported Reuters with reference to a fuel price analyst's statement.
The walkout by more than 500 United Steelworkers (USW) members at the 245,000 bpd Richmond, California, plant came after its members rejected a Chevron contract proposal over the weekend. The plant is the second-largest in state and a major supplier of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel fuel.
Its managers began taking over operations staffed by union workers on Sunday evening, Chevron said last night.
US gasoline futures jumped 3% in early Monday trading in New York on reports that European Union officials are weighing a ban of Russian petroleum imports for its invasion of Ukraine, said Devin Gladden, a spokesperson at motorist group AAA.
The Richmond plant strike is unlikely to lift prices as long as operations are unaffected, Gladden said. That will change with any disruption to the plant's gasoline and diesel units until operations return to normal, he added.
Chevron staff began replacing union workers at the controls of production units on Sunday evening ahead of the union's strike deadline.
The second-largest US oil producer is committed to continuing to negotiate toward an agreement, spokesman Tyler Kruzich said. No plans for a resumption of talks have been set.
As MRC wrote earlier, in August 2021, Chevron and other partners said they are investing in a startup to build modular waste-to-green hydrogen and renewable synthetic fuel facilities in northern California with tentative plans to eventually grow worldwide. The USD20 million investment in Wyoming-based Raven SR is focused on technology to develop combustion-free, green hydrogen for transportation that is cleaner than so-called blue hydrogen derived from natural gas.
We remind that Chevron Phillips Chemical, a joint venture of Phillips 66 and Chevron, will make a final investment decision on a new cracker in far southeast Texas in 2022, followed by an FID in 2023 on an USD8 billion joint venture petrochemical complex along the US Gulf Coast in 2023.
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 2,487,450 tonnes in 2021, up by 13% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 1,494.280 tonnes, up by 21% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whreas.shipments of PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
Headquartered in San Ramon, California, Chevron Corporation is the the second-largest integrated energy company in the United States and among the largest corporations in the world. Chevron is involved in upstream activities including exploration and production, downstream activities including refining, marketing and transportation, and advanced energy technology. Chevron is also invested in power generation and gasification processes.
MRC