Saudi Aramco IPO-ARMO.SE and its U.S. refining joint-venture Motiva Enterprises [MOTIV.UL] lead the race to buy LyondellBasell Industries ( LYB.N ) Houston refinery, according to three sources familiar with the Continue Reading
There is little doubt that China’s surging exports of refined fuels have cut profit margins for Asia’s refiners, but the pain is unlikely to be shared equally across all the Continue Reading
Fourth-largest U.S. refinery affected as waters rise Louisiana is home to about 18% of U.S. refining capacity Exxon Mobil Corp. curbed operations at the fourth-largest U.S. refinery in the U.S. Continue Reading
ExxonMobil Corp shut a crude distillation unit at its 502,500 barrel per day (bpd) Baton Rouge refinery on Tuesday as flooding disrupted operations at a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) storage Continue Reading
Delta Air Lines Inc ( DAL.N ) is flooding the New York market with jet fuel from its refinery, sacrificing refining profits in order to lower the carrier’s fuel costs, Continue Reading
Energy companies’ lifeline during the rout in oil prices – refining and downstream – has withered but the fall in margins is hardly a surprise for European refiners, which are Continue Reading
As earnings season gets into full swing, a casual glance at the fundamentals shows there is little for refiners to be excited about. Excessive production in the first half on Continue Reading
Glut likely to persist through U.S. summer driving season U.S. gasoline pump price have dropped for 33 days straight Less than three months ago, gasoline was viewed as the bright Continue Reading
An oil storage tank and crude oil pipeline equipment is seen during a tour by the Department of Energy at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Freeport, Texas, U.S. June 9, Continue Reading
North Dakota Refining Slow economic growth in Asia has led local downstream firms to turn down refining production as energy products flood the regional market, according to a recent report Continue Reading
Summer driving season is in full swing and American motorists are filling their tanks at a healthy clip, but that is not swelling the profit margins as much as usual Continue Reading
Hedge funds and other money managers are betting diesel and heating oil will take over from gasoline as the main driver of U.S. refinery profitability in the second half of Continue Reading
U.S. consumption revised lower while supply at seasonal high Money managers cut bullish crude bets to lowest since March American drivers’ seemingly insatiable thirst for gasoline is running into a Continue Reading
A North Dakota refinery that was the first to be built in the United States since the 1970s has been sold at a loss, with profit elusive since it opened Continue Reading
Philadelphia Energy Solutions, the Carlyle Group-backed company that breathed new life into a “zombie” refinery complex on the East Coast is now trying to shed the investment in the face Continue Reading
Global oil majors Chevron Corp and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are putting small refineries on the auction block as they look to trim lower-margin assets in the face of headwinds Continue Reading
Just as drivers hit the road for summer holidays, refiners are turning the taps down on gasoline as a global excess cuts into their profits. Refiners in Europe, Asia and Continue Reading
After relishing a cocktail of cheap crude mixed with profits from fuel sales, Asia’s oil processors are facing their reckoning over a lack of restraint. Profits from turning crude into Continue Reading
A fresh wave of seasonal oil demand is expected to be unleashed when the global refining capacity increases to 101.8 million barrels per day (mb/d) in August, compared to 97.25 Continue Reading
U.S. diesel futures have soared about 40 percent in the last two months, prompting independent refiners to pounce, selling future output on the view that resurgent domestic demand and higher Continue Reading
U.S. refiners are enjoying their strongest diesel margins in months as surprisingly robust overseas demand, combined with lower domestic production has triggered an unusually large drawdown in inventories for this Continue Reading
A fisherman rows his dinghy past oil refineries near port terminals in Singapore November 5, 2013. Asia’s refined product markets are being swamped by a wave of gasoline as a Continue Reading
Crude oil storage tanks are seen from above at the Cushing oil hub, appearing to run out of space to contain a historic supply glut that has hammered prices, in Continue Reading
Gasoline prices are displayed at a Phillips 66 station in Moscow Mills, Missouri January 17, 2015. U.S. independent oil refiners, such as Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66, are shelving projects Continue Reading
U.S. refiners, which posted robust profits the last 18 months even as other parts of the oil business were racked by low crude prices, finally saw their roll come to Continue Reading
An enormous fire erupted an ExxonMobil refinery in Texas on Thursday. The Baytown refinery caught fire, leading to huge black plumes of smoke into the air, visible from downtown Houston. Continue Reading
Oil refineries are shifting into high gear to produce as much gasoline as possible for the world’s fuel-hungry drivers – kicking the problem of a worsening diesel glut further down Continue Reading
From Alaska to Oklahoma, oil-producing states are scrambling to plug holes blown in their budgets by tumbling crude prices. U.S. refiners who are delaying compliance with new cleaner gasoline production Continue Reading
Strong growth in consumption of gasoline while demand for other fuels remains more subdued is creating a headache for oil refiners in the United States and around the rest of Continue Reading
Meridian Energy Group expects to use a fee-based business model at a 55,000 b/d refinery it plans to build in North Dakota, CEO William Prentice said Wednesday. The start-up company Continue Reading
Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to maintain control of two refineries that can run more domestic crude, leaving a plant that runs massive volumes of Saudi Arabian oil to Saudi Continue Reading
The breakup of Royal Dutch Shell’s and Saudi Aramco’s giant U.S. refining joint venture draws a line under an often rocky relationship and allows Aramco to accelerate an ambitious public Continue Reading
Exxon Mobil Corp has put on hold a possible project to double the size of the company’s 344,500 barrel per day Beaumont, Texas, refinery due to cuts in capital spending Continue Reading
Oil refiners are set to enjoy another year of robust profits as feedstock prices remain low, but new plants and slower global growth mean 2016 will not be a boom Continue Reading
Refineries in the middle of the US are curtailing crude processing as profits shrink, leaving behind oil that’s adding to a supply glut and pushing prices to the lowest since Continue Reading
The Phillips 66 oil refinery is viewed from the air in Carson, California August 5, 2015. U.S. refiners’ months-long windfall from cheap and plentiful crude showed further signs of running Continue Reading
U.S. refineries along the East Coast and the Midwest are facing their first major test of the winter season since last year’s blistering cold set off a string of outages, Continue Reading
Cheap crude prices and strong gasoline demand will continue to keep most refineries on both sides of the Atlantic in the black in 2016, analysts say, but weak diesel profit Continue Reading
Energy companies and oil trading firms that teamed up to build several mini-refineries that convert a swelling surplus of ultra-light U.S. crude into fuels for export seemed like a pretty Continue Reading
Refining margins in the Rockies (West Texas Intermediate) fell the most among the five U.S. petroleum districts, by $4.40 a barrel to $28.44 in the week ended Sept. 25, Credit Suisse said in a weekly report on Wednesday. Margins in the West Coast (Alaska North Slope) were down $3.02 a barrel to $15.35, followed by the East Coast (Brent) margins, which fell 22 cents a barrel to $9.01. Meanwhile, Midwest (WTI) margins were up $3.80 a barrel to $22.30, followed by the Gulf Coast (Light Louisiana Sweet) where margins rose $3.38 a barrel to $11.13. (Reporting by Harshith Aranya in Bengaluru; Editing by Anand Basu)
Europe’s oil refiners are adopting the wily and flexible ways of traders to ensure survival as the sector faces further shrinkage, delegates at an industry conference said. Hard times have pushed them to pick and choose from a wider range of crudes, ferry feedstock between their own refineries to get the optimal mix of products and seek out deeper discounts from suppliers. "Commercial operations need to be totally, fully integrated with the technical aspects," Dario Scaffardi, general manager of Italian refiner Saras ( SRS.MI ) told the Platts refining summit. "It’s been the single most important thing that we’ve concentrated on. You have to look for the most challenging crudes." Scaffardi said his refinery processed 30-35 different types of crude oil in 2015 – double the previous year. The U.S. shale oil revolution changed flows of oil worldwide and pushed some crudes, such as Nigeria’s light sweet oil, out […]
US Gulf Coast gasoline blenders and refiners’ production of finished gasoline increased 190,000 b/d or 9.2% week on week to 2.249 million b/d in the week that ended September 11, posting a five-year high for the second week of September as refineries continue to run at high rates. Gulf Coast refiners bumped up production to utilize 92.3% of their refineries’ operable capacity, recovering from a spate of production issues in the previous week, when capacity utilization was 87.6%. US gasoline demand, however, did not live up to the market’s high expectations for the last major US driving holiday of the year — Labor Day. US product supplied, which is commonly used as a proxy for nationwide gasoline demand, was largely unchanged week on week, falling 34,000 barrels to 8.983 million b/d. Article continues below… Sign up for Global Alert today. Platts Global Alert is a complete real-time information service […]
The Tesoro oil refinery is viewed from the air in Carson, California August 5, 2015. U.S. commercial crude stocks are still close to their highest levels in over 80 years, but operational requirements prevent refineries filling on-site storage facilities to their maximum capacity. An increasing proportion of U.S. crude oil stocks is held in off-site tank farms, some owned or leased by refiners themselves, but many owned or leased by marketers and traders. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which surveys storage capacity every six months, total crude in storage at the end of March was 475 million barrels, and the country had capacity to store up to 660 million. Only 182 million barrels of storage capacity, around 28 percent, was on site at oil refineries. The rest was off site at tank farms or in pipelines, railroad tank cars, barges and oilfield tanks. Most of the crude […]
Delta Air Lines Inc is running its Philadelphia area oil refinery at a near-record 110 percent of capacity, according to a person familiar with operations, a sign of the surprisingly strong summer profits U.S. refineries are generating. While collapsing global crude oil markets have cast a dark shadow over much of the energy industry, refiners are running flat out this summer to meet record U.S. demand for gasoline. Some have pressed beyond their theoretical limits as rivals suffered unexpected breakdowns or glitches last month. The refinery, in Trainer, Pennsylvania, has been running at a clip of roughly 204,000 barrels per day for the past month, the source said, resulting in higher yields of gasoline and distillates. The plant’s nameplate capacity is 185,000 bpd, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. “We have run that before, but not in a very long time,” the source said. The refinery is operated […]
Stacked rigs are seen along with other idled oil drilling equipment at a depot in Dickinson, North Dakota June 26, 2015. U.S. crude oil stocks are set to rise in the next few months as the summer driving season ends and refineries enter the autumn turnaround season, according to many analysts and traders. Rising stocks will emphasize continuing oversupply in the oil market and are expected to put renewed downward pressure on crude oil prices before the end of the year. The problem with this argument is that there is no evidence that the end of the driving season and autumn refinery maintenance, events which happen every year, normally cause crude stocks to build. Crude stocks and refinery throughput both exhibit distinct seasonal patterns which are evident in the weekly petroleum status reports published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But the end of the driving season and the […]
A view of French oil giant Total’s refinery in Donges, western France. LONDON—For Europe’s biggest energy companies, the oil-price rout has had one silver lining: Their little-loved refineries returned to churning out big profits. Now, that bright spot could be fading, even as oil prices slump. Analysts and executives are flagging the prospect of lower refining profits as summer gasoline consumption eases, lowering demand. The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based watchdog for the world’s biggest consuming countries, said earlier this month that “fissures are appearing” in the strong refining environment that has prevailed this year. Analysts don’t expect refining profits to crash in the same way oil prices have, at least in the near term. Major oil companies’ downstream businesses—including refining and the sale of petroleum products—will likely continue to perform better than they have for several years as weak prices for their key input and rising consumption bolster […]
U.S. oil prices briefly dropped below $40 a barrel on Friday—hitting a six-year low that adds to pressure on pump prices for Labor Day road trips. But cheap gasoline isn’t a sure bet everywhere. Even as most drivers around the country are spending 25% less on fuel than they did a year ago, California drivers have missed out on the gasoline price windfall because of refinery outages. Many drivers in the state are saving less than 10%…
Crude markets already in a downward spiral sank under the weight of a supply report showing growing stockpiles of oil after a major U.S. Midwest refinery shutdown. And the oversupply may just be getting started. A heavy slate of refinery maintenance in the region this fall threatens to make inventory builds in Cushing, Oklahoma, a common occurrence. The outages will follow trouble at BP Plc’s Whiting refinery in Indiana that meant about 1.5 million barrels of oil didn’t get consumed last week. “There is a lot of maintenance scheduled in the fall,” said John Auers, senior vice president at Turner Mason & Co., a Dallas-based energy consultancy. “Having a lot of plants down for turnarounds tends to push us into an oversupply situation and starts widening out the domestic-international spread.” Heavy refinery outages would leave more crude to fill storage tanks, forcing U.S. prices to fall to encourage shippers […]
Oil companies’ least-loved business over the past five years is proving to be their lifeline. Margins from refineries in northwest Europe rose fivefold last quarter to the highest since at least 2003, data from Total SA show. In the preceding quarter, the share of profit from processing crude and chemicals at Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc was four times higher than the same period a year earlier. The turnaround follows last year’s end to an oil boom that tripled the cost of crude for processing since 2009 and spurred a focus on drilling instead of refining. A decade-long doubling of refining capacity in China also swamped European efforts to rein in supply. Crude’s slump in the past year has reversed the dynamic, curbing refining costs and raising demand for fuels. “Refining has become a boon in these times from being a burden over the years,” Iain Armstrong, […]
