Ergon Inc., Jackson, Miss., is planning a $150-million expansion at its subsidiary Ergon Refining Inc.’s specialty naphthenic base oil refinery in Vicksburg, Miss., the company said.
The upgrades will include enhancements to the refinery’s crude distillation unit, modifications to its base oil hydrotreaters, and an expansion of its terminal tank farm to support new product offerings, Ergon said.
The expansion will enable the refinery to produce low-aromatic products as well as high-quality brightstocks, said Ergon Refining Pres. Don Davis.
The project also will equip the refinery with the ability to process an even broader range of crude oils from across the globe, the company said.
Ergon said this latest expansion project is designed to build on and optimize capabilities installed during a previous $250 million expansion completed in 2009 as rising unconventional oil production resulted in reduced supplies of crude that met the requisite quality specifications for processing at the company’s refineries (OGJ Online, June 30, 2010).
During the past decade, the company has invested more than $600 million into its specialty base oil refineries in Vicksburg and Newell, W.Va., and continues to increase its global distribution footprint with terminals in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, Ergon said.
Earlier in the year, the company announced separate plans to expand processing capabilities of its subsidiaries’ refining, transportation, and storage operations in the Appalachian basin to support growing condensate and NGL production from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions (OGJ Online, July 2, 2014).
