MOSCOW (MRC) -- An employee at Valero Energy Corp’s Meraux, Louisiana, refinery tested positive for the coronavirus, reported Reuters with reference to sources familiar with the matter.
Valero is following US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for cleaning up the individual’s work area. Fellow employees were informed on Thursday about the infected employee, the sources said.
Valero spokeswoman Lillian Riojas said the company “will not publicize individual cases of COVID-19” to protect employee privacy.
“Our pandemic response in the case of a positive test, however, include compliance and cooperation with the Center for Disease Control and local health authorities, deep cleaning or sterilization of affected areas, communicating with employees in ‘close contact’ with the affected employees followed by implementation of appropriate quarantines, communication with our employees at the site, and, most importantly support of all affected employees," Riojas said.
She declined to discuss the status of operations at the 125,000 barrel-per-day Meraux refinery, which the sources said continues to operate.
About 300 people are employed at the refinery, located southeast of New Orleans along the Mississippi River.
The sources did not know if other workers at the refinery were required to go into quarantine because of exposure to the virus.
This is the second case of a U.S. refinery employee testing positive for the coronavirus.
On March 11, an employee at Marathon Petroleum Corp’s Los Angeles refinery, the largest in California, tested positive for the virus. The employee and several colleagues who worked nearby were quarantined.
As MRC informed earlier, Valero Energy Corp restarted the small CDU at its Port Arthur refinery after repairing a valve on 25 September 2019.
And in late October 2019, Valero Energy Corp shut the small crude distillation unit (CDU) at its Port Arthur refinery. The 75,000-bpd AVU 147 CDU was shut to repair a heat exchanger.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 215,390 tonnes in the first month of 2020, up by 23% year on year. Shipments of all grades of high density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) increased due to higher capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 127,240 tonnes in January 2020, up by 33% year on year. ZapSibNeftekhim's homopolymer PP accounted for the main increase in shipments.
MRC