MOSCOW (MRC) -- Limetree Bay Energy will shut its St. Croix refinery indefinitely due to financial problems, the company said, after a series of operational setbacks shuttered the facility, reported Reuters.
The 210,000-barrel-per-day refinery had only restarted in February after being idle for nearly a decade, but was forced to shut in May after the facility sprayed nearby neighborhoods with a petroleum mist and residents complained of breathing problems.
Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency ordered the plant shut for at least 60 days after those incidents, which also contaminated the community's water supply. The EPA also ordered the plant to install and operate 18 sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide monitors on St. Croix in order to restart.
EIG-backed Limetree has been unable to secure the necessary funding to restart the plant, and will lay off approximately 271 employees effective Sept. 19, the company said.
The refinery will begin preparations for an extended shutdown, including purging gases from all of the units and removing any residual oil and products in the lines.
Earlier this month, Reuters exclusively reported that Arclight Capital, which had a majority stake in the refinery, exited its position and removed the refinery from its portfolio in April after its fund experienced hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
The oil storage terminal will not be affected by the decision to suspend operations.
The refinery restarted in February under private equity ownership. It was designed to profit from an international clean-air marine fuel mandate known as IMO 2020. However, the plant suffered repeated setbacks, including high levels of corrosion in pipes and the decimation of demand by the COVID-19 pandemic. The restart was delayed more than a year and ran more than a billion dollars over budget. Limetree’s chief executive was replaced in November.
We remind that in late March 2021, EPA said it had revoked an expansion permit for the Limetree Bay oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands, citing concerns that the area around the facility is overburdened with pollution. The decision allowed the plant to keep operating but blocked ongoing expansion work pending an EPA review to assess measures the facility needs to take to protect nearby residents.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
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