Chevron Plans to Finish $500 Million Pascagoula Refinery Expansion in Late Summer 2010

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) (San Ramon, California) has not allowed the recent economic recession to prevent the company from expanding operations to keep up with industry competition and increasing customer demand. During the past two years, Chevron has been busy constructing a continuous catalytic reformer (CCR) unit at the refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The project investment totals $500 million and consists of replacing two 30-year-old reformers and constructing a 55,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) CCR Platformer unit designed by UOP.

An estimated 700 construction jobs have been created during the past two years for this massive project. Chevron selected Bechtel Group Incorporated (Houston, Texas) as the construction manager of the CCR addition. Site work on the unit began in March 2008, and Cajun Contractors (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) provided the civil construction, which started in June 2008. Performance Contractors Incorporated (Baton Rouge) is currently performing the mechanical portion of the project, and Triad Electric (Baton Rouge) is the electrical and instrumentation contractor. The new CCR will have a stacked reactor and one process heater. The addition to the refinery is expected to be complete August 2010.

Chevron chose to construct the CCR unit at the Pascagoula refinery in order to improve equipment reliability and utilization, and to enable the refinery to optimize product yields. Although there will be no increase in the crude capacity, the refinery's gasoline production is expected to increase 10%, or 600,000 gallons per day.

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