Marathon refinery in Texas (U.S.) restarts diesel, gasoline units
Marathon has restarted a diesel-producing unit and the gasoline-producing unit at its 631,000-bpd Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas (U.S.), people familiar with plant operations said on Tuesday.
The refinery’s 64,000-bpd residual hydrotreater (RHU) is completely shut down following a fire on June 14 and the date for restarting the unit has not been set, the sources said.
The 140,000-bpd gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracking unit-3 (FCCU-3) tripped out of production over the weekend and was restarted by Monday, the sources said.
The 60,000-bpd diesel-producing Ultracracker was shut down by a compressor failure on July 9. It underwent repairs until late last week, according to the sources.
FCCUs use a fine, powder catalyst to convert gas oil into gasoline. The Ultracracker is a hydrocracker and uses a catalyst under high heat and pressure in the presence of hydrogen to convert gas oil to diesel.
Three units on the RHU use hydrogen to remove sulfur from motor fuels in compliance with U.S. environmental rules. The fourth unit is a hydrocracker converting residual crude to diesel.
The Galveston Bay Refinery is the second-largest by capacity in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
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