-A production upset at OxyChem’s La Porte, Texas, vinyls plant has forced the company to reduce the plant’s run rate, Platts reports. The plant has 1,250,000 mt/year of vinyl chloride production capacity.
-Houston-based DKRW Advanced Fuels will scale back its plans to build a coal-to-gasoline plant in Wyoming due to low oil prices. Via the Associated Press, the project has been plagued by delays and funding problems since it was first proposed in 2004, fueling skepticism that it will ever be built. The plant would cost $2 billion as initially planned.
-Meanwhile, another government delay related to Tesoro’s proposed railport in Washington means the company will have to wait until next year to make a final decision on the project. Via Reuters, state authorities said they would not publish an environmental impact report on the project until November, despite a previous plan to release it in July. Tesoro has been forced to delay the railport several times due to what CEO Greg Goff has called a “painfully slow” review process.
-Calumet Specialty Products and MDU Resources Group held a ceremony today to commemorate the recent startup of the Dakota Prairie Refinery near Dickinson, N.D. The 20,000-barrel-per-day refinery produces diesel fuel from oil produced in the Bakken shale play. It is the first new refinery to be built in the U.S. in nearly 40 years.
-The state of New York has officially banned fracking. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration said last December it would outlaw fracking in New York after the state’s health commissioner claimed there is no scientific proof that it is safe.
