MOSCOW (MRC) -- Lyondell Basell Industries (LBI) plans to restart the large coker at its 263,776 barrel-per-day (bpd) Houston refinery on Thursday or Friday, reported Reuters with reference to Gulf Coast market sources.
The 57,000 bpd coker was shut by a Nov. 28 fire that filled a heater with hard carbon deposits, the sources said. The heater has to be cleaned before the unit can restart. The coker was shut for a four-week overhaul in October and November.
As MRC wrote previously, in August 2016, LyondellBasell made the final investment decision to build a high density polyethylene (HDPE) plant on the US Gulf Coast. The plant will have an annual capacity of 1.1 billion pounds (500,000 metric tons) and will be the first commercial plant to employ LyondellBasell's new proprietary Hyperzone PE technology. The start-up of the new plant is scheduled for 2019.
LyondellBasell is one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies in the world. Driven by its 13,000 employees around the globe, LyondellBasell produces materials and products that are key to advancing solutions to modern challenges like enhancing food safety through lightweight and flexible packaging, protecting the purity of water supplies through stronger and more versatile pipes, and improving the safety, comfort and fuel efficiency of many of the cars and trucks on the road. LyondellBasell sells products into approximately 100 countries and is the world's largest licensor of polyolefin technologies.
MRC