The fall maintenance season could give refiners a bit of relief from declining profits seen earlier this year. Via Reuters, European turnarounds will reach 1.1 million barrels per day and the Middle East and Asia are set to take about 5 million barrels per day of capacity offline. The planned turnarounds, combined with unplanned shutdowns in regions such as the Gulf Coast, could help ease the global refined products glut that has helped depress margins from $11 per barrel last year to break-even levels in 2016.
The Gulf Coast has seen a number of unplanned shutdowns in recent weeks, including power outages that led to unit shutdowns at LyondellBasell’s Houston refinery and Marathon’s Galveston Bay refinery. ExxonMobil shut down four units at its Baton Rouge, Louisiana, refinery after severe flooding disrupted operations at a nearby LPG storage facility.
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