After Harvey, Aramco Shuts Down Biggest Refinery in US

Damages resulting from Harvey storm on the US refining sector mounted as Motiva Enterprises – owned by Aramco – announced that it would completely halt operating in Port Arthur refinery because of the flood.

“At 5 a.m. on Wednesday, Motiva began a controlled shutdown of the Port Arthur refinery in response to increasing local flood conditions,” the company said – it added that restarting the refinery would depend on flood waters receding.

Barclays clarified in a research memorandum that the US stocks data this week and the next one won’t be accurate, which means that the data won’t be clear for a period of time. This would affect oil prices that are influenced by stocks’ data.

Goldman Sachs estimated in its statement issued on Monday that the storm would increase domestic crude oil availability by about 1.4 million barrels a day if the case remained the same. The bank added that until August 27, refineries of 3 million barrels per day capacity were shut down, knowing that they represent 16.5 percent of the overall refining capacity in the US.

Bloomberg revealed on Tuesday that the capacity of refineries that shut down is 2.35 million barrels a day. Some refineries haven’t been shut down yet (by the time Bloomberg published its report) but some units were and refining was curbed. Among them is the 605,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Port Arthur, Texas, plant, Motiva Enterprises.

Goldman Sachs stated that 4.4 million barrels of US refining capacity has been shut by Harvey on Tuesday, that represents nearly 23 percent of US refining production. Restarting plants under even the best conditions can take a week or more.

The Energy Information Administration in US issued a report on Wednesday, revealing a sharp drop in crude stocks in the US last week despite the increase of refineries’ product.