Aruba

According to sources, El Paso's (Coastal's) 290kb/d refinery was entirely shut about two weeks ago after a power failure. Among the units shut are a crude unit, two large hydrotreaters and two cokers. Only one crude unit and a few small hydrotreaters are currently running, bringing total refinery output to only 85kb/d.

Even before this incident, the refinery was running at a reduced rate of about 160kb/d, awaiting the restart of a new visbreaker that burned in a fire last April.

As we understand it, the plan is to start heating one large hydrotreater tonight and have it up and running in about 7 days, then the other will come up. After the first hydrotreater comes up, the other crude unit and the new visbreaker will restart.

In the shipping market, we hear they are long time-charters and reoffering. Sources have also seen them buying jet into Boston as well as low-sulfur diesel/jet off the USGC for Florida.

I was out of the loop last week, but I don't think this outage has been reported as of this afternoon. Apologies if it has been.