Gulf Coast energy facilities restart just days after Laura.
Gulf Coast units report minimal damage, crank up only hours after Louisiana landfall
Several Gulf Coast refineries are restarting operations after sustaining only minimal damage as Hurricane Laura made landfall early Thursday.
Motiva Enterprises, which operates the nation’s largest refinery in Port Arthur, said its refinery, petrochemical plant and distribution terminals sustained minor damage from the Category 4 storm, and began restarting operations within hours of the storm making landfall a few miles away in Cameron, La.
Exxon Mobil, which operates a refinery in Beaumont, said its facilities needed minor repairs and began restarting operations Friday.
“Timing on when operations can resume to normal will largely depend on the availability of power, product transportation infrastructure and the reopening of the Sabine Neches Waterway,” an Exxon spokesman said.
Valero said it saw no visible damage to its Port Arthur refinery.
The company is planning to restart operations.
Citgo, which operates a refinery in Lake Charles, La., said it had no safety issues or fossil fuel releases despite taking a direct hit from Hurricane Laura.
Winds of up to 150 miles per hour, however, damaged the refinery, and the company is devising plans to repair the facility over the coming days. Citgo said it doesn’t expect an immediate restart.
Other refiners that operate in Lake Charles, including Total and Calcasieu, did not respond to requests for comment.
Energy analysts from S&P Glob
al Platts said refineries in Lake Charles may have more difficulty getting workers back into the plants than dealing with the damage from Laura. Residents along the Gulf Coast were ordered to evacuate ahead of the storm.
Platts analysts also warned that power outages could delay refinery restarts, particularly in Louisiana, even if they suffered little damage from the storm.
Gulf Coast refineries in the projected path of Hurricane Laura halted operations to protect workers and avoid spills from the Category 4 storm. As refineries burned off excess chemicals during the shutdown process, however, they emitted millions of pounds of pollution into the air.
Facilities in near Beaumont and Port Arthur released more than 4 million pounds of emissions from Monday to Thursday, according to notices filed with state regulators. The releases were about half of the estimated emissions during Hurricane
Harvey in 2017, which caused several refineries, including Motiva, to close for weeks.
Hurricanes pose a major threat to the nation’s refineries concentrated along the Gulf of Mexico. More than 45 percent of the nation’s refinery capacity is along the Gulf Coast. The refineries between Beaumont and Lake Charles process about 2.6 million barrels of crude a day, according to the Oil Price Information Service.
Also along the Louisiana coast, Cheniere Energy is restarting its Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas plant in Cameron Parish, which the company on Monday said received no significant damage. Bechtel, Cheniere's engineering and construction contractor, also is resuming construction on a sixth liquefaction facility and a third marine berth at the LNG terminal.
Cameron LNG, a joint partnership between Sempra LNG, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Total and NYK, said it is still assessing damage to its LNG plant in Hackberry, La., and has no timeline to restart operations.