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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. |
