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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Energy
companies last Friday continued efforts to restore operations at US Gulf
Coast offshore platforms and refineries shut by Hurricane Laura as oil markets
largely shrugged off the storm's impact, reported Reuters.
Some 300 offshore production
facilities and half-dozen refineries halted ahead of a Category 4 storm that hit
the coast of Louisiana early Thursday with winds of 150 mile per hour (240 kph).
The destructive winds cut a narrow path through the area, sparing facilities not
directly in its path.
However, repairs to Citgo Petroleum's s
418,000-barrel per day Lake Charles, Louisiana, plant that was on the storm's
path could take four to six weeks, according to Mizuho Securities. The company
did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Motiva Enterprises,
operator of the largest US refinery, and Valero Energy Corp on Friday began restarting their
Port Arthur, Texas, refineries, said people familiar with plant
operations.
US crude futures traded at USD43.10 per barrel early Friday,
up six cents, and not far from its USD42.34 level a week ago. US gasoline
futures were up two cents, but are up less than 2% from a week ago, before the
storm.
ExxonMobil Corp said its 369,024 bpd Beaumont, Texas, refinery,
about 50 miles (80 km) west of where the storm's landfall, required "minor
repairs," a spokesman said, and the company was taking steps to restart once
power and port operations were restored.
"Refiners may be reluctant to
quickly return to production when the product they make is a money losing
proposition," Robert Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho Securities,
wrote on Friday.
The ports of Beaumont, Orange and Sabine, Texas, and
Cameron and Lake Charles, Louisiana, remained closed on Friday, according to the
US Coast Guard.
Houston, the United States' largest energy export port,
restarted operations on Thursday and had nearly halved the list of 53 vessels
waiting on Thursday to reenter the port.
One-way movement and other
restrictions were in place on Friday at points along the Houston Ship Channel,
according to the US Coast Guard.
As MRC informed before,
Exxon Mobil Corp restored stable power to its 369,024-barrel-per-day (bpd)
Beaumont, Texas, refinery as it prepares to begin restarting production units.
Exxon’s Beaumont refinery and chemical plant were shut down last Tuesday as
Hurricane Laura was menacing the southeast Texas coast. In Beaumont, the company
also operates a cracker with a capacity of 830,000 mt of ethylene and 195,000 mt
of proplyelen per year, low density polyethylene (LDPE) plant with a capacity of
236,000 mt per year and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant with a
capacity of 727,000 tonnes per year.
Ethylene and propylene are
feedstocks for producing 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. |
