Largest U.S. refinery begins restart after near-total shutdown -filing

Dec 27 (Reuters) – The largest U.S. crude oil refinery started on Sunday to restart key models central to its capability and motor gas manufacturing following a close to complete shutdown late final week in extreme chilly climate, a discover filed by Motiva Enterprises MOTIV.UL with Texas air pollution regulators confirmed.

The restart of models at Motiva’s 626,000 barrel-per-day Port Arthur, Texas refinery might take as much as 16 days, the discover filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality mentioned.

The refinery’s largest two crude distillation models (CDUs), the 350,000-bpd VPS-5 and the 200,000-bpd VPS-4, are among the many models to restart by Jan. 11, in line with the discover.

The refinery’s three CDUs do the preliminary refining of crude oil by breaking it down into feedstocks for all different models. Sources informed Reuters on Friday the refinery had been idled.

The refinery’s 81,000-bpd gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker and 105,000-bpd diesel-producing hydrocracker are additionally shut and scheduled to restart, in line with the submitting.

The two cokers, the 54,000-bpd coker-1 and 110,000-bpd coker-2, are slated for restart as properly, the submitting mentioned. Cokers convert residual crude oil from distillation models into motor gas feedstocks or petroleum coke, which can be utilized as an alternative to coal.

The 18,000-bpd alkylation unit and 49,000-bpd catalytic reformer can even restart, in line with the discover. Using totally different processes, the alkylation unit and reformer produce octane-boosting components for gasoline.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; enhancing by David Evans)

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