News and Media Releases
Motiva Milestone
06/11/2008
Motiva reaches milestone in refinery expansion project; delivery of coker furnace cells marks an important step in expanding the Port Arthur Refinery to the largest in the United States.
Delivery of coker furnace cells
Motiva Enterprises has announced the delivery of three coker furnace cells to its Port Arthur Refinery. The first of three coker furnace deliveries marks an important step in Motiva’s expansion of its Port Arthur facility. Upon completion of the expansion project, the Port Arthur Refinery will be the largest refinery in the United States and among the top 10 in the world.
The furnaces are an integral part of the $7 billion refinery expansion project. Their function is to extract the remaining usable parts from the crude oil stream and help optimize the utilization of crude oil. The furnace units are built in Tulsa, Oklahoma, transported by barge, and assembled on site at Port Arthur Refinery.
“Delivery of the coker furnace cells is a major sign of progress in our effort to expand the Port Arthur refinery,” said Bob Pease, president and CEO of Motiva. “Not only will the expanded refinery add jobs and other stimuli to the local Port Arthur economy, the refinery expansion will also take us a step closer to meeting our nation’s long term energy demand by increasing U.S. refined products output.”
Upon completion, the Port Arthur Refinery expansion will double the facility’s crude oil throughput capacity to 600,000 barrels per day. The upgrades will lead to new supplies of transportation fuels for U.S. markets.
The endeavor will require an estimated 4,500 construction jobs and the potential for as many as 300 new jobs. Using advanced technology systems and replacing some existing systems, the upgrades will decrease most types of emissions from refinery operations on a per barrel basis.
Products manufactured at the refinery include gasoline, diesel, aviation fuels and high quality base oils. The new production capacity is expected to be online in 2010 and will increase Motiva’s supply of Shell-branded fuels to the company’s wholesale and direct supply markets. In all, the refinery will produce about 23 million gallons of transportation fuels per day.