Orinoco Belt oil is extra heavy with lots of bitumen. Does Chevron or anybody else have 300,000 BPD of Delayed Coker Capacity available to cover that?
5 replies (most recent on top)
Send it to El Segundo.
@ja
Thanks for the explanation, good info.
VENMAX will supplant the drop in available SJV and keep ESE 2CU full…
My guess is that Pascagoula is already maxxed out on the amount of Venezuelan crude they can process. Probably under 100 Kbbl. At high crude prices like we are seeing, there will probably be a tremendous incentive to run dirt cheap Venezuelan, until they run into the existing delayed coker and hydroprocessing bottlenecks. Building new capacity for dirty crude is prohibitively expensive and full of market uncertainties. I expect the US will lift sanctions on Venezuela against selling crude to China, and China will resume being Venezuela's biggest customer. And Chevron will profit well as a crude producer, but not as a refiiner.
@OP
I thought they must be planning to refine it at Pascagoula