MOSCOW (MRC) -- Marathon Petroleum Corp plans shut down the gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker 3 (FCC 3) at its 585,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas, in mid-February for a planned overhaul, reported Reuters with reference to sources familiar with plant operations.
The 140,000-bpd FCC 3, 31,500-bpd alkylation unit 3 (Alky 3) and 75,000-bpd Ultraformer 3 (UU 3), along with a hydrotreater, was shut for the overhaul, scheduled to finish by the end of March, the sources said.
Marathon spokesman Jamal Kheiry declined to discuss operations at the refinery.
FCCs use a fine powder catalyst to convert gas oil into unfinished gasoline.
Alkylation units convert low-octane byproducts from FCCs into components that boost octane in mid and premium gasoline grades.
The Ultraformer is a reformer that through a different process also converts refining byproducts into octane-boosting components added to gasoline.
As MRC informed earlier, most units were shut on Sunday night and Monday morning at Marathon Petroleum Corp's 585,000 barrel-per-day Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas, as temperatures plunged due to a Arctic cold front reaching the Gulf Coast.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2% year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
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