US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

The sour crude CDU is severely damaged

Erwin Seba - REUTERS - June 25, 2012

It uses 600,000 barrels of oil and produces 6 million gallons of gasoline every day, just in time for the 4th of July. --Ed.

In the end, all it took was a small chemical spill -- perhaps less than a barrelful -- to bring down the newest, mightiest oil refinery in the United States.

Three weeks ago, while workers repaired a minor leak at the Port Arthur, Texas plant owned by Motiva Enterprises, a few gallons a day of so-called "caustic" was inadvertently seeping into the newly built Crude Distillation Unit (CDU), the 30-story-high network of interconnected cylinders and latticed pipelines at the heart of the refining process.

While harmless when mixed with crude, the undiluted caustic vaporized into an invisible but devastating agent of corrosion as the chamber heated up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit (370 Celsius); the chemical gas raced through key units, fouled huge heaters and corroded thousands of feet of stainless steel pipe.

Now, just weeks after they commissioned the biggest U.S. refinery project in a decade, two of the world's biggest oil titans -- Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Aramco, which own Motiva -- are rushing to repair the potentially billion-dollar glitch that has added an embarrassing and costly coda to a landmark $10 billion expansion.

After a five-year effort to double the plant's capacity, making it the largest in the country, they must now reassemble many of the same people and parts for a blitzkrieg fix that may exceed the original $300 million cost of the unit: corrosion experts are flying in from across the world; hundreds of workers are being hired; bespoke 30-inch (75-cm) stainless steel pipelines and 30-story cranes may need to be obtained quickly, according to sources involved in the repairs.

... [Read More]

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

The whole thing sounds squirrelly.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

If I was a conspiracy "person"
I would be certain this was a setup to raise gasoline prices.
Gasoline has been plummeting in price-and small difference in supply make HUGE differences in the price we pay.
We use how much gasoline-maybe 200,000,000 gallons per day(pure guess)
add 20 cents to the price- $40,000,000 per day-25 days $1 billion.

Yeah it was just a screw up- but what a screw up!!
I will bet we IMMEDIATELY-TODAY- notice a price spike!!

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Well Gasoline futures initially jumped three cents and have dropped down to 2.6 cents in the last thirty minutes. I figure we will continue to see it drop back as the day proceeds on.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Apparently OPEC (and others) need a market for sour crude.

Their sweet crude must not be able to meet total demand even at higher prices.

I think there is another smaller refinery of this type scheduled to come on line 3Q12.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Hopefully with more competent engineering. Wouldn't take much, obviously, to sabotage one. Who needs to crash a plane into a refinery? Al Quaeda could get more bang for their buck with some strategically placed Drano.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

WHOOOPS! Another refinery accident. How convenient. And at a refinery co-owned by Shell and Aramco? Interesting.

An incident at the Northwest's largest refinery caused our prices to be highly elevated for most of the spring. No pattern here folks, move along. ;)

All this is reminding me of the 2001 Western power crisis, for which we northwesterners are still paying in the form of 15-year power contracts that locked in that year, thanks to an unusual number of power plants being offline due to problems or just plain "maintenance". Now this year there has been an unusual number of refinery problems. I'll be watching closely for signs of history repeating itself. First time is tragedy, remember.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

hmm.. maybe the Chinese are to blame, so they can get their hands on the Canadian and Venezuelan tar..

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Well gasoline futures are up 8 cents for the day.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

"Hopefully with more competent engineering. Wouldn't take much, obviously, to sabotage one."
RIGHT!
Hard to believe something like this wasn't forseen.
What did they do-outsource the engineering of this plant??
The BP disaster was simple to understand- it was a cheapout-didn't want to "admit" the cement job was ineffective-if they did it was going to cost time=$$
Didn't keep the blowout preventer properly maintained-once and time=$$
And money in BPs case was millions per day- real money even by oil "bidness" standards.
This refinery however- probably was an extra $1,000,000 to correctly engineer it-one time cost-nothing to the oil "bidness"

Yeah there is a cheapout-or outsourcing- at the bottom of this
Maybe a scam- but more likely just a plain old short sighted(quarterly report) cheapout-
CHEAPOUT!

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Conspiracy guy thinks this is a perfect recipe for shutdowns at any time for any length of time in the future.

Should there not have been layer upon layer of warning systems and procedure that would have prevented undiluted caustic from cooking the entire plant??? Who works there ... Shemp, Moe, Larry?


/however, it does comfort me to know that the Saudis are firmly in control of our "domestic" gasoline production and pricing.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Whats the problem? The API will spin it this way:

This will provide employment opportunities for all those corrosion experts and other experts they need to fly in and special purpose equipment that needs to be broudht in - pronto!

Their neglegence only causes the product to be more expensive.

Where else can you screw up and charge MORE for something?

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

It's a windfall mainly to their competitors, who get to charge more without the lost production and repair costs.
Somebody will be fired for the negligence.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Just to recap:

1. Oil stockpiles highest in 22 years
2. Gasoline consumption lowest in 11 years

You'd think domestic gasoline prices would be falling rapidly, but no. Why?

Multiple refinery closures AND maintenance issues at the remaining (brand new) refineries.

/Why WOULD I be suspicious?

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

The shutdown of this refinery will have little or no impact on US and world markets.

IF ... you read the article carefully ... you will find that this facility has been under construction for the last 10 years.

And I assume that means no output until the refinery was commissioned only a few WEEKS before the failure was discovered ... suggesting no REAL change in US production relative to 2011 for the duration of Motiva outage/recovery, i.e., net change in US production is zero.

Have I misread that?

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Here's something you might want to read carefully:

Energy: Refined out of existence
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/256f5...#axzz1yrPrpdRR


_____________
"More than 3m barrels of daily refinery capacity have closed in western countries, since the financial crisis, says the International Energy Agency, the west’s oil watchdog. Emerging economies have meanwhile added 4.2m b/d in capacity, with another 1.8m b/d coming this year. “It’s really a tale of two markets,” says Toril Bosoni, IEA senior oil analyst. “You have very contrasting pictures for economic growth and demand, and refining is reflecting what’s going on elsewhere.” "
_____________

The point is, it's a global market and the big global players (like Shell, Aramco) are going to get the best price they can, be that in Brics, the U.S. ..... whatever. So the whole idea that some U.S. politician is going to fix the domestic energy woes with a drilling policy, or a pipeline is a complete lie, and the "players" have to keep the lie going as well.

U.S. refineries are being closed or idled because U.S. demand is falling while in other parts of the world demand is rising. There's more money to be made somewhere else.


/can't provide a link, google the article title and you should come up with access

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

More news:


Gasoline Retail Deliveries by Refiners Remain at Record Low Levels
http://hearourvoices.us/post/2012/06...ow-Levels.aspx

Lowest since the early 1980's????
Is this data for real?
Is the MSM covering this?


Holy crap!

/ add, earlier I referenced gasoline consumption lowest in 11 years, this would indicate lowest in over 30 years. Hard to believe.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

What do you mean LOWEST SINCE THE EARLY 1980's?

IF ... I read the graph correctly Jan 2012 is about 37% below Jan 1983 ...

EDIT: A thought ... could ethanol and E10 and E85 be 10% of the 37% decline?

It will be interesting to see how long this declining consumption trend, first observed in 2003/2004, continues.

Also ... news, the refinery outside Philadelphia is being purchased by an airline as a hedge against future fuel costs. I think the facility has been on the market about 3 or more years.

Things are changing ...

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

I didn't see any data from the 70's. (or 60's, or 50's). It would be interesting to know.

Where's the main stream media on this? ( conspiracy guy is taking a break)

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Wait-
It shows just 28,000,000 gallons per day-
One barrel of oil is 44 gallons-so produces maybe 30 gallons gasoline??
So of the 20,000,000 barrels per day we use-only 1 million goes to gasoline??
And 28,000,000 gallons is maybe 560,000,000 miles per day??
Is that it???
We use a LOT less than the 80's??
This is strictly gasoline- not diesel/jet fuel-
28,000,000 gallons- not much!!

WHAT THE HECK DO WE DO WITH THE OTHER 19,000,000 BARRELS OF OIL??

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

According to this source:
Gasoline: The new big U.S. export
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/05/news...port/index.htm

"The country exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it imported in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

430,000 x 42 = 18,060,000 gallons of gasoline per day being exported (and I would presume this number has only gone up (substantially?) since september.

Makes me wonder what percentage of oil we are actually importing for domestic use? I used to think (because that's what I've read) that we were (early 2000's) importing 2/3 and now we're down to 1/2.

In light of this, .... I don't know what to think.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Ok. Disregard the massive decline. (It's just a decline)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showt...143#post348143

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Ah, but that's refined gasoline. We import crude, refine it, and export (some of) the product.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Rough breakdown per barrel +/- ...

gasoline ~ 19 gallons
diesel, kerosene, jet fuel etc ~ 10 gallons

This is of course dependent on the quality of the crude, refinery, and operational adjustments.

At least this is close.

I think you will find that US finished petroleum goods exports have incresed significantly over the last 24~36 months.

Come to think of it ... maybe back to 2006/7? Not certain about this one.

IIRC ... the US is now the world's leading ethanol exporter.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

50mpg
Thanks.
What happens to the 14 gallons left?
Is it just asphalt? or is it burnable?? perhaps heat a boiler make electricity??

Modern ships are diesel,right?? They can't burn the heavy gunk that WW2 ships could can they? They were "steamships" heat boiler-use steam to drive turbine >drive prop shaft?

Thanks
Charlie

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

We are now using much more heavy sour crude, so there is less gasoline and less diesel per barrel. Only a few places like Libya have light sweet crude, and their production is way down.

If I am not mistaken, this refinery is specifically built to refine the tar sands bitumen, which is much lower quality than even heavy sour crude. We can pave a LOT of roads, though...

To sum up: we have already had TWO pipeline failures that carry the tar sands bitumen (it cannot even be called "oil"!) and a major failure at a refinery built to refine tar sands bitumen.

Hmmm...

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Just how viscous is this oil sand gunk??
Will it flow at "room temps"-70 degrees or so ?
I'm guessing it has to be heated up to pump it ??
Charlie

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Its tar, they dilute it with a solvent (usually low grade gasoline, about 20%) so that it flows. When transported by railroad the cars are heated so that the tar does not freeze.

Re: US largest refinery may need a year for repairs
 

Actually a barrel (42.? gallons) of crude produces about 44~45 gallons of "stuff" during processing [due to addition of oxygen ... iirc] ... ranging from very high grade gasolines and other high volatiles down to almost an ash ... I think it is called coke, a rather dirty carbon fuel currently purchased in high volumes from the US predominately by China.

There is a wide range of petro-chemicals as well.

So roughly 30 gallons of assorted liquid fuels/solvents and 15 gallons equivalent of "other".

After the Alaskan pipeline was openned much of that crude was sold as "bunker fuel" primarily to the Pacific nations (land and sea applications) iirc.

I am not certain about very large modern marine turbo diesels ... I seem to remember reading that some can handle bunker fuel ... won't guarantee that though. Think <120 RPM redline.