MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil Corp restarted the last crude distillation unit (CDU) that had been shut by a Feb 12 fire at its 502,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, reported Reuters with reference to sources familiar with plant operations.
The 90,000-bpd PSLA-7 CDU was the last of the refinery’s four CDUs to return to production after being idled by a fire in a natural gas pipeline that supplied fuel to the heaters on the CDUs, the sources said.
Exxon spokesman Jeremy Eikenberry declined to discuss the status of individual units at the Baton Rouge refinery.
Most of the refinery’s units have restarted as the CDUs returned to production last week and this week, the sources said.
The CDUs do the primary breakdown of crude oil into feedstocks for all other production units at the refinery.
As MRC informed before, in September 2019, ExxonMobil announced plans to spend GBP140 million over the next two years in an additional investment program at its Fife ethylene plant, which has a capacity of more than 800,000 t/y.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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