Today's Refining Hotline Headlines

North America
Marathon continues with repairs to the 240,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Distilling Unit 5 (DU-5) crude oil unit at its 240,000-BBL/d refinery in Norco, Louisiana, after the unit experienced a fire during its initial restart attempt following an extended outage caused by Hurricane Ida. At this time, there is no set timeline for the restart.

Marathon is in the process of restarting the 56,000-BBL/d north side of its 131,000-BBL/d refinery in El Paso, Texas, after experiencing a loss of power from a third-party supplier on November 13. All units were shut down except for the 56,000-BBL/d Crude 6. On the south side, four additional units, and associated units, also are restarting.

Pemex TRI's 270,000-BBL/d refinery in Cadereyta, Mexico, remains operational despite a fire that broke out at a cooling tower on November 12. The tower was being dismantled and was out of operation at the time. Separately, nine units continue to be offline for repairs; the tentative restart is set to occur by late November or early December.

International
South Refineries Company (SRC), on November 10, was forced to shut down the 60,000-BBL/d Crude Block 2 at its 210,000-BBL/d Basra Refinery in Iraq, due to a fire in the 60,000-BBL/d Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) 2 caused by high pressure in safety walls. The block has been operating at 50% since November 12. Four major units are affected, but they are expected to reach full throughput by November 19.

KirishiNefteOrgSyntez is in the process of restarting the 12,400-BBL/d Reformer LCH-35-11/600 (Area 4) unit at its 420,000-BBL/d Kirishi Refinery in Russia, after completing a planned maintenance shutdown.

Gazprom Neft PAO's 30,000-BBL/d Catalytic Cracker (43-103) unit at its 400,000-BBL/d Omsk Refinery in Russia is in reserve mode until late November, after completing a planned maintenance shutdown that began in early October.

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