A hydrotractor damaged by a fire at the refinery of Marathon Petroleum MPC of Galveston Bay, in Texas, will remain closed until September, as they said *on Thursday sources that are familiar with the system operations.
All the other units of the 631,000 barrels per day (BPD) of Texas City, Texas, are operating at full speed or almost, after the fire of June 14 at the Idrotractor of the 400 train, which is part of the residual hydrotrautation unit from 64,000 BPD (Rhu), the sources said.
The sources, which did not want to be identified because the information is not public, did not quantify the exact impact on production.
Marathon’s spokesman Jamal Kheiry refused to discuss refinery operations in an e-mail sent *Thursday evening.
Galveston Bay’s refinery is the second largest in the United States by capacity, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
The 400 train is one of the three Rhu hydrotrators, which uses hydrogen to remove sulfur from raw materials and refined products obtained by them to comply with the US environmental standards.
The Rhu also has a unit for heavy oils that uses hydrogen to increase raw materials for fuels that can be extracted from residual crude oil, the dense and dusty residue more often used to produce asphalt and oil coke.
Following the fire, the production of the 24,000 pp fluid catalytic cracker 34,000 pp (FCC-3) was reduced for several days, the sources said.
