Published December 21, 2012 by Dow Jones Newswires
Motiva Enterprises LLC most likely will not be able to restart for a few more days a main processing unit at its refinery expansion in Port Arthur, Texas, a person familiar with the refinery’s operations said Friday.
Motiva has been struggling to restart the 325,000-barrel-a-day refinery expansion’s crude distillation unit since the unit went down in early July. The $10 billion expansion was to bring the combined refinery’s capacity to 600,000 barrels a day and make it the largest in the U.S. and one of the 10 largest in the world.
A chemical leak caused Motiva to shut down the CDU–the first stop for crude oil in the refining process–days after its late-May start. The company began restarting the unit last week but has continued to struggle to keep chemicals out of the unit, people close to the situation have said.
Motiva workers had originally hoped to bring the CDU back online by the end of this week, but “it might be a few days” more, a person said familiar with the refinery said Friday.
A Motiva spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment. Motiva is a partnership of Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA.LN, RDSA) and Saudi Arabian Oil Co.
Write to Ben Lefebvre at [email protected].
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
Copyright © 2012 Dow Jones Newswires
