Published in Oil Industry News on Wednesday, 27 May 2015
Devon
Energy Corp. shut wells and Kinder Morgan Inc. suspended operations at a
fuel terminal southeast of Houston after storms flooded parts of Texas
and cut power to tens of thousands. Refineries and pipelines continued
to run.
Oklahoma City-based driller Devon stopped pumping from
wells in areas affected by flooding in Texas, company spokesman John
Porretto said by e-mail on Tuesday. Kinder Morgan suspended service at a
complex in Pasadena, Texas, where trucks load gasoline and diesel after
lightning affected the area’s electrical systems.
Pipeline operators
and refiners including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Enterprise Products
Partners LP said they weren’t affected by the weather.
Storms have
slammed Texas, home to the most oil-refining capacity in the U.S., with
more than 10 inches of rain, flooding homes and freeways and halting
bus and rail service. More than one-third of the nation’s oil production
is in Texas.
“The production shut-ins are going to be temporary,”
Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil & Associates LLC in Houston,
said by phone. “The flooding on the roads and bayous are bad, but the
Houston-area refineries don’t appear to be impacted.”
U.S.
benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil sank $1.69, or 2.8 percent, on
Tuesday to settle at $58.03 a barrel on the New York Mercantile
Exchange.
Plants Operating
Operations at
Exxon’s 560,500-barrel-a-day Baytown complex, Texas’s second-largest
refinery by capacity, are normal, Deedra Moe, a spokeswoman for the
plant, said by e-mail on Tuesday. Phillips 66, which owns two refineries
in Texas, hasn’t been affected by the storms, company spokesman Dennis
Nuss said by e-mail.
Marathon Petroleum Corp. declined to comment
on the status of its two oil refineries in Texas, which have a combined
capacity of 535,000 barrels a day. LyondellBasell Industries NV, which
runs a 263,776-barrel-a-day plant in Houston, also declined to comment.
“I
have seen no reports of injuries to employees or environmental impacts
due to severe weather,” Bill Day, a Valero Energy Corp. spokesman in San
Antonio, said by e-mail on Tuesday. The company runs an
88,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Houston. Day said he couldn’t comment on
production rates.
Enterprise Products Partners LP, a
Houston-based company that operates storage terminals and pipelines,
hasn’t had significant trouble because of to the storms, company
spokesman Rick Rainey said by e-mail Tuesday.
The truck racks at
Kinder Morgan’s Jefferson Street terminal in Pasadena that halted
operations were scheduled to resume service later on Tuesday, company
spokesman Richard Wheatley said.
Warren Henry, a spokesman for driller Continental Resources Inc., said rain in Oklahoma has caused some delays in truck traffic.
“It’s not having a severe impact on operations,” Henry said by e-mail. “We’re working around the difficulties.”
EOG
Resources Inc. has seen “very little disturbance to its operations,” K
Leonard, spokeswoman for the Houston-based company, said.
Source: www.bloomberg.com