ExxonMobil Restarts Coker at Baton Rouge, Louisiana Refinery

ExxonMobil (XOM.N) restarted the coker on Thursday night at its 522,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) Baton Rouge, Louisiana refinery, people familiar with plant operations said on Friday.

The 45,000-bpd East Coker at the Baton Rouge refinery had been shut for a planned overhaul, the sources said. The company originally hoped to restart the coker on Oct. 14 but pushed the restart back to this week.

"We have completed maintenance on some of our units at the Baton Rouge refinery," ExxonMobil spokesperson Lauren Kight said on Friday.

The coker is one of four at the Baton Rouge refinery. Cokers convert residual crude oil into either feedstocks for motor fuels or petroleum coke, which can be a coal substitute.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Chris Reese)