MOSCOW (MRC) -- Marathon Petroleum Corp plans to finish a multi-unit overhaul in late July at its 585,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas, said sources familiar with plant operations, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Marathon shut the 225,000-bpd Pipestill 3B crude distillation unit (CDU) on Monday to begin connecting to it the units shut for the overhaul, the sources said. Marathon spokesman Sid Barth declined to comment.
The company began the overhaul on May 23 with the shutdown of a 65,000-bpd reformer, a 60,000-bpd residual oil hydrotreater and an aromatics unit, the sources said. Five days later, the 60,000-bpd hydrocracker, the 31,500-bpd alkylation unit and a 47,500-bpd aromatics recovery unit were shut along with a sulfur recovery unit.
The overhaul was originally scheduled to begin in March, but was pushed back twice to reduce the risk that large numbers of contract workers at the refinery would spread novel coronavirus, according to the sources.
As MRC wrote previously, Marathon Petroleum Corp idled its 166,000 barrel-per-day (bpd)refinery in Martinez, California beginning April 27 in response to the coronavirus pandemic’s hit to demand for refined products.
Meanwhile, Marathon Petroleum Corp plans to operate the gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker (FCC) at its 585,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas. The 140,000 bpd FCC restarted on Sunday, 12 April, after repairs following a March 23 brief power outage that shut the unit.
Propylene is the main feedstock for the production of polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market was 457,930 tonnes in January-May 2020 (calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Deliveris of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
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