Motiva refinery expansion could be idled for a year-sources

[lacajun]

Motiva Refinery Could Be Idled Up to Year

Oops!

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[MiketheEngineer]

Might be good for us - we do a lot contact work there?? One man's trash another man's treasure!!

 

[JohnRBaker]

Perhaps... However, it may also be contributing to the recent spike-up in crude prices which had been dropping since May but on June 28 it started to climb back up (when site below opens, change the chart setting to 1 Month or 1 Year to see the point that I'm making):

http://quotes.post1.org/historical-crude-oil-price-chart/

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[GregLocock]

I had assumed this would impinge on the price of crude, but it is odd, since the supply of crude is unaffected!

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[ScottyUK]

Doing rather better than Coryton in England... bled dry by debt-ridden Petroplus, then closed. :-(

 

[Compositepro]

This event would, if anything, lower the price of crude and increase the price of refined products.

 

[MJCronin]

Since the accident, has there been any recent detailed report on the extent of damage ?

Has there been any type of "lessons learned" issued by anyone ?

 

[lacajun]

I didn't see anything at the chemical safety board.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[stanweld]

The initial scuttlebutt indicated inadvertant additions of caustic to the feed stream. If so, it's not a pretty picture when one considers the amount Cr-Mo low alloy steels used in a Crude Unit. unit.

 

[rb1957]

yes, but who the heck went looking for corrosion when the fire damage was miminal ?

 

[StarmanTedKnight]

I talked with a chemical engineer that was involved with putting some compresssors in this expansion. I am not a Chem.E but from what I understood from what he told me was that the fires were the result of the corrosion. The process had some chemical that when it reacts with air, it starts on fire. Through operator error and/or bad design (a lack of block valves ect) the piping was allowed to corrode more than it should have.

 

[TomDOT]

Well, yes, if we have a corrosion caused failure 9 days after commissioning on a plant expansion which should last decades - I have to agree that it was "allowed to corrode more than it should have"

By 3 orders of magnitude.

That's a pretty gross error.