Tuesday July 18, 4:12 pm Eastern Time

Weekend power outages in SE Texas hamper oil refineries

NEW YORK, July 18 (Reuters) - Brief power outages over the weekend in southeastern Texas knocked out at least one gasoline making unit and the cash oil products market was full of talk that other units were down, said traders on Tuesday.

Cash conventional gasoline rose one penny on the refinery talk on Tuesday, a solid gain, but not one that indicates traders are panicking. ``It depends who you ask,'' said one trader, ``Deals are getting done anywhere from a half cent to 1.25 cent stronger than Monday,'' he added.

Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE:VLO - news) on Monday said a 52,000 barrels per day catalytic cracker went out at its Texas City, Tex., refinery after a five minute power outage early on July 15.

But talk persisted on outages at Fina Inc.'s (AMEX:FI - news) 183,000 barrels per day Port Arthur, Tex., refinery and BP Amoco's (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: BPA.L) 460,000 bpd Texas City refinery.

BP Amoco denied that a power outage caused any problems at the refinery, but a spokesman would not say if there were any problems at the refinery.

Fina would not say if it cut runs at the Port Arthur plant. ``There was a 60 minute power outage on Saturday. The plant has been up and running since then,'' said a Fina spokeswoman.

But futures markets were rife with talk that Fina cut runs by half. ``Fina had cut runs due to a power outage on Saturday,'' said Thomson Global Market analyst Tim Evans. He said the damage at the refinery would last more than a week.

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http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000718/n18457650.html

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), July 18, 2000

Answers

Outage meet Outage.

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), July 18, 2000.

Cave Man, I rarely post to your threads, but I read most of them (this subject fascinates me) and I really appreciate that you put them up.

With inventories so tight, any cascading problems on the production or distribution ends will have ramifications down the line.

-- Whatever (who@car.es), July 18, 2000.

YEAH RIGHT "cascading problems" JUST LIKE THE Y2k COMPUTER PROBLEMS. DON"T YOU ***TWITS*** EVER LEARN????

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), July 18, 2000.

But it's happening, cpr, as much as you desire to deny it. There isn't any room for problems right now. But they are happening anyway. There will be repercussions next winter in exascerbated retail distillate prices and also gasoline if they abandon making gasoline in order to try to catch up with distillate inventories. This has been going on all year. They have given no sign they will catch up. Prices reflect this.

-- Whatever (who@car.es), July 18, 2000.

The Bayway refinery in Linden NJ has it's own "co-gen" power plant on site. They make enough juice for the place, plus sell excess to the local power co. I know that this is a huge refinery, but isn't "stand- by" power sorta standard procedure at a refinery?

To borrow an old line, doesn't this stuff happen all the time?

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), July 19, 2000.

What part of this

Deregulating Power Costs ~ Causing brownouts

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003VmX

did you not understand?

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), July 19, 2000.

The lack of power generating facilities is due to uncertainty of environmental regulations.

The United states is a net importer of refined products. Why? Enviromental regulations.

At this point this subject is moot.

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), July 19, 2000.