Texas refiners evaluate plants, eye restart: Update

Adds detail throughout with refiner, ERCOT detail.

Power and natural gas costs may slow some Texas refinery restarts as the state recovers from a winter storm disaster that knocked millions offline.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, responsible for the power grid covering most of the state, expects to today end emergency conditions that ordered rolling blackouts to bring power demand in line with hobbled power generation across Texas. Generation remains limited, according to the operator, but temperatures are warming.

"Now that we are into more normal operations, the workings of the market will determine when people decide to use power and what they are willing to pay to be on the system, and we do not have as many concerns about large demand coming back into the system," ERCOT chief executive Bill Magness said today. "Those will be arrangements between power companies and customers, whether petrochemical or other large industrial facilities."

The grid operator was working with large industrial companies to return facilities to service as they were ready, senior director of operations Dan Woodfin said.

"We have been talking to transmission operators and they are working with industrial facilities and developing plans," Woodfin said. "Some have already come back, others will be longer out into the future, but all trying to work with those facilities to bring them back on line when they want."

More than 3.3mn b/d of Texas refining capacity operates on the ERCOT grid. Another 1.7mn b/d of refining capacity, including the Beaumont area on the Texas coast, operates in portions of Texas connected to multistate power grids.

The winter storm and subsequent squeeze on gas and power supplies affected nearly every Texas refinery — roughly 5mn b/d of capacity — beginning 14 February. That includes more than 2.1mn b/d confirmed shut down.

Saudi Aramco-owned Motiva was evaluating equipment today to prepare for restart at its 603,000 b/d refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The company had no specific timing for when it could return units to service. Shell also had no timetable for restarting its 340,000 b/d joint venture refinery in Deer Park.

By Elliott Blackburn