LyondellBasell Houston Refinery Restarts

LyondellBasell expected to increase production at its 263,000 barrel per day Houston, Texas, refinery this week following the restart of a vacuum distillation (VDU) unit attached to the large crude unit on Sunday night, the news agency Reuters has reported.

The refinery has been running at 32% of its capacity since Apr. 15 when the 91,000 bbl/d VDU was shut, the last of four major production unit outages to be taken offline after a fire in a coking unit on Apr. 8.

Reuters said the refinery likely will boost production to at least the 147,000 bbl/d capacity of the unit that processes heavy crude oil at the refinery. Since the fire, production on the unit has had to be cut back.