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June 07, 2005

Sort of hard to believe...

that this could make such a difference, but it has been fairly big news:

Honvesa LLC shut down one unit of a refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands, reducing the plant's daily capacity by 20 percent to 400,000 barrels on Friday. A day earlier, Exxon Mobil Corp. shut down a boiler in a gasoline unit at the largest U.S. refinery, a 557,000 barrel per day facility in Baytown, Texas.

Such seemingly slight decreases in refining tend to have big effects, however, because the United States does not have excess capacity. The last new U.S. refinery went into service in 1976, and the number of refineries has decreased ever since. Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma recently obtained air permits for a new refinery, which would process 150,000 barrels daily and cost $2.5 billion to construct. It is not scheduled to open for four more years.

Of course Hovensa in the above refers to the refinery on St. Croix. If you have not heard the phrase "Peak Oil" and have any interest in the subject you should check out the latest from Kevin Drum on the Washington Monthly blog.

Posted by afinta at June 7, 2005 12:27 PM

Comments

"Units are coming back on. For example, in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, that process unit was down but is now back up and this refinery is one of the largest supplying the U.S."

The crude unit restarted Monday at Hovensa's St. Croix refinery after an unplanned shutdown May 27.

Posted by: afinta [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 8, 2005 01:36 PM

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