Motiva Port Arthur Becomes the Largest Refinery in the U.S.

While many U.S. refineries are scaling back production, pivoting to biofuels, or even shuttering, Motiva Enterprises has quietly expanded production capacity at its Port Arthur, Texas, refinery to 654,000 barrels of crude a day, making it the largest oil refinery in North America. 

According to people familiar with the plant's operations, this was accomplished by removing bottlenecks in its processes to squeeze out more production. And they've done this at a time when two other U.S. refineries are closing up shop - LyondellBasell’s Houston refinery and Phillips 66’s Los Angeles refinery.

Motiva's upgrade project at its Port Arthur refinery seems t0 align with a growing industry preference for incremental optimization of existing infrastructure over new builds or large expansions. It also fits into a bigger industry trend, where mega-refineries are getting even bigger while smaller plants are either shut down or retrofitted to process different feedstocks.