Valero is lifting key equipment into place this week for a project that will boost the flexibility of its 90,000 b/d refinery in Houston, Texas.
Valero's crude topping project will not increase the overall finished product capacity of the 90,000 b/d refinery, but rather will allow it to process lighter crudes and cut its need for purchased intermediate feedstocks. The company began working to add 185,000 b/d of light crude processing capacity at three Texas refineries after its success running lighter Eagle Ford crude volumes at its 95,000 b/d refinery in Three Rivers, Texas.
The company will add a crude topping unit at its 200,000 b/d refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, and plans a 25,000 b/d expansion of crude capacity at its 170,000 b/d refinery in McKee, Texas, by the end of this year. Construction on the Houston project should finish by mid-2016. Work this week triggered flaring reported to a community warning system.
The projects undermine claims by producers who want to end the US crude export ban that refiners cannot run higher volumes of the country's light, sweet production, Valero has said. Refiners argue the large increase in US barrels was simply not yet economic to refine, and that any end to an export ban must be linked with other federal regulations limiting petroleum movements, such as a requirement that products shipped between US ports move on costlier, US-flagged vessels.
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