MOSCOW (MRC) -- Valero Energy’s Memphis refinery is operating at normal rates after a system shutdown on January 6 because of low temperatures, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The plant ran some equipment at lower rates after instruments froze, water lines on process units burst and units tripped off because of the weather, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
A filing dated January 6 with the National Response Center said low temperatures caused a system shutdown. The company said in a voicemail January 6 that the refinery’s flare gas recovery compressors were tripping off, Bob Rogers, manager of pollution control for the Shelby County health department, said in a phone interview on January 7.
Bill Day, a Valero spokesman in San Antonio, said in a telephone interview that he has no comment on the refinery’s status. The Memphis plant, which can process 195,000 bpd of crude and other feedstocks, uses primarily light and sweet crude oil delivered by the Capline pipeline, according to Valero’s website. Capline runs from St. James, Louisiana, to Patoka, Illinois.
As MRC wrote before, Foster Wheeler signed an evergreen agreement with Valero Energy for the provision of home office engineering and project support services to Valero’s Pembroke refinery and other facilities in the UK. Foster Wheeler will provide home office front-end engineering design and detailed engineering design services to support new development and modification projects at the Pembroke refinery and other facilities.
Valero Energy Corporation is a Fortune 500 international manufacturer and a marketer of transportation fuels, other petrochemical products, and power. It is based in San Antonio, Texas, United States. The company owns and operates 16 refineries throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and the Caribbean with a combined throughput capacity of approximately 3 million barrels (480,000 m3) per day, 10 ethanol plants with a combined production capacity of 1.2 billion US gallons (4,500,000 m3) per year,
MRC