[pup55]

I do not have any specifics at my fingertips, but in looking through the quarterly reports, most of the refiners have some project or another in the works that they are spending some number of billions on, and will be complete in 18 months to two years.

I will try to go back this afternoon if time permits to give some detail on this.

A lot of this stuff requires air pollution permitting that is difficult in some cases. The Port Arthur area, in particular, is especially bad in this regard.


But, we have said before that these units are hot, and even worse, cycle through hot and cool cycles, and they are made of metal, and eventually they want to break down unless you do constant disciplined maintenance.

In fact, I just recently attended a technical meeting about this topic, and you would be shocked how many places in one of these big pieces of equipment are subject to corrosion and/or potential meltdown because of the extreme heat involved. Every valve, every joint, every place where something is welded onto the outside, anyplace where the heat builds up more in one spot than the surrounding metal, all sorts of places you would never think of are potential spots for failure.

On the good side, these things are pretty standardized throughout the industry, so there is some communication among the engineers about where to look for potential failure spots, even between companies. But I maintain that it is not the engineers' fault, if it is the operating philosophy of the company to run this stuff until it drops.

We can probably go back and calculate again how many millions per day BP is losing because those two big refineries are down. Same is true for Valero.

[DantesPeak]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')nvestigators are now trying to confirm the cause of the fire in the unit at the center of the plant. They say a power failure may have led to the explosion and fire.

[DantesPeak]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ecause of the explosion and fire, the refinery is operating at about 60 percent of capacity, or 165,000 barrels of crude processing compared with normal daily capacity of 265,000 barrels.

Total hydrocarbon feedstock capacity is at about 190,000 barrels compared with more than 300,000 barrels of daily processing, he said.

Gillingham said an electrical problem centered around the diesel furnace in the northwest quadrant of the refinery occurred between 6:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m.

Refinery officials are uncertain what caused the ignition in the furnace. The cause is under investigation.

Valero's firefighting units quenched the fire with assistance from fire units at neighboring Chevron Phillips. The Port Arthur Fire Department was present in a reserve capacity, Gillingham said.

[Eli]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DantesPeak', '
')
This is certainly bad news on diesel supplies. It was recently discussed that the US might even send diesel to Europe because of short supplies there.

[shortonoil]

Eli said:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hese plants just never can slow down now, we need the fuel.

[DantesPeak]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DantesPeak', '
')
This is certainly bad news on diesel supplies. It was recently discussed that the US might even send diesel to Europe because of short supplies there.

[AirlinePilot]

My main worry right now is not that we keep having these small failures and problems. I worry that you have a big event. Something which takes out a significant unit for a very long time, if not forever.

I worry about a larger fire causing something very big to happen, along the lines of a Texas City fire. For those who dont know about that google it.

If we have something really big happen we will not recover,

[Eli]

Short I hear you but I think logic is not the thing driving this anymore.

We are all crack addicts who will do whatever it takes to get our fix today and what happens tomorrow does not matter.

Look at the 6% drop Dantes posted about the oil majors how are they going to reverse that? If you think about it they aren't, other people say they will because we need it... bad.

[DantesPeak]

Video, requires adobe player:

KFDM

[shortonoil]

pup55 said:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut, we have said before that these units are hot, and even worse, cycle through hot and cool cycles, and they are made of metal, and eventually they want to break down unless you do constant disciplined maintenance.

[DantesPeak]

Interesting stuff about Martensite.

Diesel cracker to be out for a while:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')amage by an hour-long fire after a power outage on November 8 at the facility’s 50,000 b/d diesel hydrotreater could take two to four weeks to repair according to a company spokesperson. The power outage that caused the fire also affected a platformer, alkylation unit, and sulfur recovery unit.

[pup55]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')AKE CHARLES, La. (AP) - The feds have proposed $169,000 in fines against Citgo Petroleum's refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana, over safety concerns.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')llegations were raised that Houston-based Citgo failed to protect employees from hazardous working conditions.

[Cid_Yama]

Want to bloody a nose but not deny the US of the production from this refinery.

I think this refineries days are numbered anyway. Chavez is pulling out assets everywhere he can, including the storage facility in the Bahamas that was where oil intended for the US was stored.

Venezuela is cutting all ties with the US.

[DoubleD]

Witnesses: Blast rocks Texas oil refinery

(CNN) -- An explosion rocked a Texas oil refinery Monday morning, shaking homes three miles away, witnesses told CNN.

Video from I-Reporters showed a massive cloud of smoke forming over the refinery in Big Spring, Texas, about midway between Dallas and El Paso.

One worker was injured in the blast and all workers had been accounted for, Blake Lewis, a spokesman for Alon USA, which owns the refinery, told The Associated Press.

I-Reporter Larry Bates said he was laying in bed when the walls of his house shook and he heard a large boom.

"And I thought immediately, 'Oh my God, the refinery," Bates said. Watch huge cloud of smoke over refinery »

I-Reporter Diane Murphy told CNN the blast rocked her home, a couple of miles from the refinery.

"I was just in the kitchen and it shook the whole house and it popped the doors open."

"I thought it would knock the walls down," John Moseley, managing editor of the local newspaper, the Big Spring Herald, told The AP.

"It was extremely scary. You shook you were so scared,"Laura McEwen, who lives about two miles from the refinery, told AP. "Our walls shook. It jolted your bed. It was like an earthquake."


The refinery, owned by Alon USA, employs about 170 people and can process about 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day, according to the company's Web site. It supplies an area including west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern Oklahoma, and Arkansas with fuel products and asphalt, the Web site says.

CNN affiliate KOSA-TV reported Interstate 20, which passes by the refinery, had been shut down.

Residents living within a mile of the facility were asked to evacuate, according to KOSA.

[pup55]

My really unofficial but probably pretty accurate total says four refinery problems in the last couple of days.

You let these things sit around all winter, and this is what you get when you try to heat them back up.

[emersonbiggins]

Photo from Fox News:

[robinhoooood]

Wow that picture really adds to the descriptions of the explosion.. that is huge!

[DantesPeak]

cbsnews.com

Quite an explosion.

[PeakingAroundtheCorner]

Video up at KXAN.com.

[phaeryen]

It will be a while before production ramps back up there I imagine.

Or was this a fatal KO for this refining plant?