Details here:

170,000 barrel / day refinery fire and Gulf Coast spot market info

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 07, 2000

Answers

Your link does not work, can you post the info?

-- Mikey (mikeG@aol.com), January 07, 2000.

from the OPIS alert:

2000-01-07 10:34:28 EST ***FIRE AT MOTIVA DELAWARE REFINERY KNOCKS OUT CRUDE UNIT The list of refinery problems just seem to continue with news this morning of a serious fire breaking out at Motiva's 170,000 b/d Delaware City refinery. The blaze, which broke out at approximately 4:30 a.m. EST, has been contained according to a refinery spokesperson but has yet to be extinguished. The fire is centered at the plant's crude unit, and though it's too early to access the damage, sources close to the refinery's operations believe the crude unit will be down for at least a week. There were no injuries reported. The NYMEX initially seemed to be reacting to this news with Feb. gasoline futures shooting over a penny in value. But at presstime, the entire Merc is now showing losses on what market watchers are calling an early bout of pre-weekend profit taking.

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 07, 2000.

Downstreamer,

As you've been following the industry for quite some time, what's your take on the number of problems recently occuring? Any chance this is SOP? If anyone has the time and resources, what about plotting the number of incidents on a graph for a quick and dirty visual correlation.

-- James (jpeet@u.washington.edu), January 07, 2000.

This is definitely a Y2K problem.

-- (marco@streltic.net), January 07, 2000.

Thanks again downstreamer.............

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), January 07, 2000.

FYI:

OILWORLD: spot prices, cash petroleum, gasoline price, North Sea Brent, Saudi Arabian Light, Alaska North Slope, natural gas
Also,

Selected Crude Oil Spot Prices
-retro U$ barrel prices for the last year

-- It's Me (Not@here.com), January 07, 2000.

Let me try that again:

FYI:

OILWORLD: spot prices, cash petroleum, gasoline price, North Sea Brent, Saudi Arabian Light, Alaska North Slope, natural gas

Also,

Selected Crude Oil Spot Prices
-retro U$ barrel prices for the last year

-- It's Me (Not@here.com), January 07, 2000.

James,

Its not posible to chart or quatify refinery mishaps and shutdowns because they are frequently downplayed or covered up by the oil companies. If you're a refinery and you deliver X amount of product to the market on a daily basis, you hafta move into the spot market and buy any product when you're refinery or parts of your refineries go down. News of problems firm values.

A wild guess- we only hear about half the problems out there. Frequently it might just be a 10K barrel/day reformer at a 200,000 barrel a day refinery. The market never knows.

All I can say is I've been tracking this kinda thing for over 10 years and there has been an inordinate # of probs this week. The gulf coast spot market gasoline firming about 3 cents realtive the NYMEX reflects this. That said, I think its presumptious to say its definately Y2K related. It might be. Motivas 2 early week probs (one a power outage) are apperantly resolved. Most y2k embedded predictions here predicted probs wouldn't be easily solved. I think these probs are being resolved.

One big report to watch is next Tuesday's API stats. They should reflect refining levels, crude imports, gasoline production, implied demand and everything else thats pertinent. Prob is they're a trade organization reporting on themselves and they aren't very accurate on a week to week basis. Only their monthly reports, coming out several weeks after the fact are audited.

My prediction is refining mishaps are gonna get resolved and this oil market is gonna stuggle with a big stockpiled overhang to work off and warm weather decreasing heating oil consumption. NYMEX prices slid this afternoon and they'll prob continue to slide....

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 07, 2000.

Lets try this Its impolite to scream.

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 07, 2000.

any better?

-- hope this helps (html@fixit.alt), January 08, 2000.