By Erwin Seba
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Chemical maker LyondellBasell Industries detailed on Friday its long-announced plan to completely shut its 263,776 barrels per day (bpd) Houston oil refinery within the first quarter of 2025.
The deliberate closure marks the most recent in a wave of refinery closures throughout the United States as gasoline demand is anticipated to peak this decade and decline underneath stress from renewable fuels and electrical automobiles.
In January, one of many plant’s crude distillation items (CDU) and a coker manufacturing prepare will shut, Lyondell refining chief Kim Foley advised analysts on a name to debate outcomes of the third quarter.
In February, the second manufacturing prepare of the CDU coker, which provides the fluidic catalytic cracker (FCC) for gasoline manufacturing and auxiliary items, will shut down, ending motor gasoline manufacturing, Foley mentioned.
For the fourth quarter of this yr, Lyondell expects to function the refinery at 90% capability.
Lyondell initially deliberate to shut the Houston refinery in 2023, however prolonged its life resulting from excessive gasoline margins. Last month, rival US refiners Phillips 66 and Valero Energy introduced plans to shut a refinery in California and put two others underneath evaluation for potential closure in that state.
Phillips 66’s 139,000 bpd Los Angeles refinery will stop manufacturing by the top of 2025.
“The refinery, in the event you look again, was initially designed to course of crude oil manufacturing within the state of California, and that has dropped by about 75%,” CEO Mark Lashier mentioned.
Valero CEO Lane Riggs mentioned final month that “all choices are on the desk” for the corporate’s 91,300 bpd Wilmington and 145,000 bpd Benicia, California, refineries. California’s new legal guidelines for holding emergency provides would penalize operators and make their refineries unprofitable, Valero mentioned in a submitting with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In the most recent wave of U.S. refinery closures, which occurred between 2017 and 2022, 9 crude oil refineries with a mixed capability of 1.2 million barrels per day remained idled or transformed to renewable gasoline manufacturing.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
