TotalEnergies has started a scheduled 60-day turnaround on one of its crude distillation units (CDU), along with a reformer and several hydrotreaters, at its 238,000-bpd refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, according to sources familiar with operations.
The shutdown involves the 35,000-bpd continuous catalytic reformer (CCR), three diesel hydrotreaters with a combined capacity of 84,000 bpd, a 42,000-bpd naphtha hydrotreater, and a sulfur block. Also offline are the ACU-2 CDU and its associated 51,000-bpd vacuum distillation unit (VDU-1). The refinery’s larger 150,000-bpd ACU-1 CDU will remain in service during the outage.
CDUs operate under atmospheric pressure to break down crude oil into feedstocks for downstream processing units, while VDUs perform similar functions under vacuum pressure. Reformers upgrade refinery byproducts into octane-rich blending components for gasoline. Hydrotreaters remove sulfur from fuels and feedstocks to meet U.S. environmental standards.
