Valero Port Arthur, Texas plans a second delayed coking unit and sulfur recovery unit as part of a $900 million expansion. This could result in a 20% increase in overall capacity for the refinery. The coker could be operational in 2021 according to Lillian Riojas, director of media relations and communications for Valero.
At the peak of construction, 1,500 people will be employed and there will be 30 to 40 permanent jobs.
In 2001, nearly $850 million was invested in a delayed coker and hydrocracker to enable the plant to run heavy, sour crude.
A 2006 project expanded the original DCU capacity from 80,000 bpd to 105,000 bpd and increased refinery throughput capacity from 250,000bpd to 310,000bpd. Current capacity is estimated at 395,000bpd.
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Paul Orlowski is General Manager for the Refining Community which includes Coking.com, CatCracking.com, SulfurUnit.com, Resid Hydrocracking and SDA. They consult at refineries around the world. They've hosted 36 technical conferences around the globe, trained 1,000's and completed very beneficial consulting and troubleshooting projects. Paul co-founded Coking.com Inc in 1998 with Gary Pitman. Evan Hyde later joined the team. Besides being an educator and software applications engineer, he worked 18 years at ARCO and BP refineries near Seattle, WA USA. Previously he worked for Science Applications International Corporation and Dealer Information Systems. In 2019 look for #RefComm Galveston Coking | CatCracking | Resid Hydrocracking and RefComm® Rotterdam Coking | CatCracking. In 2020 Galveston; Gdansk, Poland and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Singapore.
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