MOSCOW (MRC) -- A leak in a pipeline that carries oil from U.S. Gulf of Mexico offshore facilities has halted production at two fields, Exxon Mobil Corp and Royal Dutch Shell said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Shell said it temporarily halted production on its 100,000-barrel-per-day deepwater Perdido production hub last Thursday after a subsurface leak was discovered on Exxon’s Hoover Offshore Oil Pipeline System (HOOPS). Production on Exxon’s Hoover platform also was halted because of the leak, Exxon said.
The HOOPS pipeline has been closed for repairs, a spokeswoman for Shell said. Exxon has notified government agencies and shippers and has responded to an onshore release of crude oil at a facility in Freeport, Texas, spokesman Todd Spitler said on Monday.
"We anticipate resuming flow on the line in a timely manner once it is safe to do so,” he said. Exxon did not say what caused the leak or how much production was affected.
HOOPS connects the Exxon-operated Hoover, Marshall and Madison offshore fields, which combined produce about 4,000 barrels of oil per day, according to a 2018 marketing brochure.
Shell’s Perdido hub is moored in some 8,000 feet (2,438 m) of water about 200 miles (322 km) south of Galveston, Texas, and is a joint venture among Shell, BP Plc and Chevron Corp .
The 153-mile (246-km) HOOPS pipeline brings oil from several offshore oilfields to the Quintana Terminal near Freeport, according to an Exxon website.
As MRC informed earlier, Exxon Mobil Corp operates it 502,500 barrel-per-day Baton Rouge, Louisiana, refinery at low capacity utilisation as poor demand has pushed up inventories and filled storage tanks. The number of contract workers at the Baton Rouge refinery was cut by 1,800 people as Exxon begun informing service companies of planned spending cuts. The refinery’s production was cut to about 440,000 bpd, the sources said.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 383,760 tonnes in the first two month of 2020, up by 14% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased due to the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 192,760 tonnes in January-February 2020, down by 6% year on year. Homopolymer PP accounted for the main decrease in imports.
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