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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Independent U.S.
refiner Valero Energy Corp plans to operate its 15 refineries at up to 79% of
their combined total throughput capacity of 3.15 MMbpd in the third
quarter of 2020, the company said, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Valero,
the second largest U.S. refiner, said its eight Gulf Coast refineries will
operate in a range between 1.4 million and 1.45 MMbpd during the third quarter,
as demand remains reduced because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the company
said.
The company expects demand will increase so that inventories will
match the pre-pandemic five-year average sometime in 2021, Valero President Lane
Riggs said.
"A normalized world looks like the inventories are basically
back into the five-year band,” Riggs said during a conference call with analysts
to discuss Valero’s second-quarter results. “That’s how we sort of look at it.
And yes, we believe some time next year, we should be back into that sort of
market."
As MRC reported
earlier, in June 2020, Valero Energy Corp’s Memphis, Tennessee, crude oil
refinery was operating at two-thirds of its 180,000 barrel-per-day (bpd)
capacity because of low demand in the COVID-19 pandemic. The Memphis refinery
cut production by as much as 50% in early April and has been raising production
gradually since then.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing
polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE
imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000
tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in
imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months
of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer
(homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
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