Motiva Refinery in Port Arthur May be Shut Up to 2 Weeks

Motiva Enterprises’ Port Arthur, Texas, refinery, the nation’s largest, may be shut as long as two weeks for assessment of the plant and repair of any damage, sources familiar with plant operations said on Thursday. The 603,000-barrel-per-day Port Arthur Refinery was shut on Wednesday because of flooding from Tropical Storm Harvey.

Total SA has yet to estimate the time to repair its 225,500-bpd Port Arthur refinery because electrical power has not been restored, the company said. Gulf Coast market sources said a two-week outage at the Total plant was possible because electricity producer Entergy had to restore a substation that would supply the refinery with enough power to perform repairs, the sources said.

Motiva said it was conducting an assessment of the refinery and could not provide a timetable for the plant’s restart.

“Given the unprecedented flooding in the city of Port Arthur, it remains uncertain how quickly the flood waters will recede, so we cannot provide a timeline for restart at this time,” the company said in a statement.

One of the sources said the shutdown could be longer.

“They’re assessing damage as the water goes down,” the source said.

In some places, water was 5 feet (1.5 m) deep in the refinery, the sources said.