Refinery

The Limetree Bay oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands, long under environmental and financial pressure, said this week it would close indefinitely. Citing “severe financial” hardship, owner Limetree Bay Energy said it had suspended plans to restart the 210,000 b/d facility on the island of St. Croix. The refinery has been offline since May…

Mexico’s state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) will add more refining capacity to its portfolio with the deal announced Monday to purchase Royal Dutch Shell plc’s share in the partnership that owns the Deer Park refinery on the Texas coast. The $596 million transaction was celebrated by Mexican officials as yet another step on the…

Midstreamer NuStar Energy LP has unveiled plans to boost capacity by 6,000 b/d on a 293-mile refined products pipeline that runs from the Panhandle in Texas to Albuquerque, NM. The San Antonio-based limited partnership said Wednesday it would upgrade pump stations on the 17.2 million b/d Amarillo-to-Albuquerque Pipeline, which it jointly owns with Phillips 66…

Phillips 66 wants to exploit the technology base it has to advance a lower carbon business platform, while maintaining a strong balance sheet and returning value to shareholders. The Houston-based energy firm sharply reduced the 2021 capital expenditure (capex) budget to $1.7 billion, down from $3.1 billion last year. About $1.1 billion of sustaining capital…

San Antonio-based Howard Energy Partners (HEP) has agreed to acquire a refinery services facility in Corpus Christi, TX, from a subsidiary of MPLX LP, management announced Tuesday. HEP has executed an agreement to acquire the Javelina Facility, a treating and fractionation plant capable of extracting natural gas liquids, as well as olefins and hydrogen, from…

Light oil production continues to grow in the United States, rising 7% over the last four years to 57% of the total 1.24 million b/d of crude produced in 2019, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). U.S. light oil production grew to 6.7 million b/d last year, up from 5.8 million b/d in 2018,…

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said during his morning press conference on Monday his government was planning to launch an infrastructure plan in the next two weeks. No details were provided, but immediately prior to the coronavirus shutdown a long-awaited public-private infrastructure plan including energy projects worth close to $100 billion was expected to…

Royal Dutch Shell plc expects to impair up to $22 billion in the value of its global natural gas and oil assets for the second quarter, citing the challenges from Covid-19 that have slammed commodity prices and energy demand. The supermajor said it was adapting “to ensure the business remains resilient.” A revised forecast for…

The Alberta government offered a C$440 million ($330 million) loan guarantee Tuesday to a proposed refining customer for Canada’s top industrial natural gas user, thermal oilsands production.