The largest U.S. refinery shut two crude distillation units on Sunday because of the Colonial Pipeline outage, according to people familiar with the matter, as reported by Reuters.
Motiva Enterprises LLC’s 607,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Port Arthur, Texas, refinery shut the 195,000-bpd VPS-4 CDU and the 80,000-bpd VPS-2 CDU along with the 49,000-bpd reformer and 19,200-bpd lube oil hydrocracker, the people said.
Motiva declined to discuss the status of individual units at the Port Arthur refinery.
Temporary idling production on the two CDUs reduces production at the Motiva’s refinery by 45%.
Motiva’s refinery has three CDUs. The largest of the three, the 325,000-bpd VPS-5, remained in operation on Monday, the sources said. CDUs break down crude oil into the feedstocks for all other units in the refinery.
Reformers convert refining byproducts into octane-boosting components added to gasoline.
