Louisiana oil refineries begin operations after hurricane Ida

By Bisola Adeyemo

Two largest refineries in southern Louisiana are coming back to life after Hurricane Ida.

Marathon Petroleum Corporation (MPC.N) on Friday said its 578,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Garyville, Louisiana, the state’s largest, was in the initial stages of restarting.

It followed Exxon Mobil Corp’s (XOM.N) resumption of operations at its 520,000-bpd Baton Rouge refinery. Reuters reports

The U.S. Department of Energy offered Exxon 1.5 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to rebuild its stocks.

Entergy Corp (ETR.N) restored power to about a quarter of affected customers, it said on Friday, laying out a schedule to provide power to major Louisiana cities by Tuesday.

Recall that nine refineries were knocked offline by Ida’s winds and utility power losses. Five could be back online within two weeks, estimated Robert Campbell, head of oil products research at consultancy Energy Aspects.
But obtaining supplies from U.S. offshore producers may take longer, he said.

“Refiners might resort to the SPR to request crude as Exxon did if pipelines from the Gulf are not ready by then,” said Campbell. “They could also import crude, which would take time.”

PBF Energy (PBF.N) on Friday said it was receiving limited power at its 190,000-bpd Chalmette refinery but could not predict when operations could fully resume. A restart could begin over the weekend, people familiar with the matter said.

Power was returning to Valero Energy Corp’s (VLO.N) 215,000 bpd St. Charles refinery in Norco, GasBuddy.com analyst Patrick De Haan said.