Texas City Refinery Update Following April’s Power Outages

BP said today it has substantially restored capacity at its 475,000 barrel-per-day Texas City refinery following the power outages which hit the south eastern Texas area the week of the 25th of April. A number of refineries and petrochemical plants belonging to other industry participants were affected in separate incidents.

BP spokesman, Scott Dean said: “Due to the impact of the emergency shutdown and restart, we are continuing to have operational issues associated with some key downstream units. This has meant that we have only been able to economically utilise about half of the plant’s capacity on average over the quarter but we expect to return the last of the impacted units to full capacity during August.”
The power failures forced the refinery to shut down for three days. Restart of the first of two crude distillation and cracking trains was completed by May 3rd. The second production train came online towards the end of May. However, it has had limited upgrading economics due to technical and operational issues particularly in one catalytic cracker and one train of the residue hydrotreating unit.