Marathon Petroleum Corp. has let a contract to Fluor Corp. to provide engineering and procurement on the operator’s South Texas Asset Repositioning (STAR) program for its now 571,000-b/d Galveston Bay refinery in Texas City, Tex. (OGJ Online, Jan. 23, 2017).
Fluor’s scope of work under the contract will include further integration of Marathon’s former Texas City refinery into the adjacent Galveston Bay refinery—now the second largest refinery in the US—to improve the facility’s efficiency and reliability by increasing the residual oil processing capabilities, upgrading the crude unit, and integrating facility logistics, Fluor said.
While it did not disclose a specific value of this latest contract, Flour confirmed it has booked the undisclosed amount into its backlog for this year’s first quarter.
Alongside performing feasibility studies and early engineering work for the STAR program beginning in 2013, Fluor also currently is providing engineering, procurement, and construction management services for the reconfiguration to enable the Galveston Bay refinery to achieve the US Environmental Protection Agency’s updated Tier 3 gasoline sulfur standards (OGJ Online, Apr. 13, 2017).
STAR program
First announced in fourth-quarter 2015, the originally $1.5-billion STAR program was to involve a series of staged project investments at the Texas refineries that, alongside expanding crude processing capacity and production of ultralow-sulfur diesel, also will enable increased upgrading of residual oil into high-quality products as well as higher recovery of distillates and gas oil.
Integration of the refineries into a single complex additionally will allow Marathon to reduce overall production costs of its Texas refining operations.
Marathon completed a first phase of the multiyear STAR program in 2016 at the Galveston Bay refinery with a project that increased conversion of residual oil into lighter products by 20,000 b/d.
Once completed, the STAR program will in result in an integrated Galveston Bay-Texas City refining complex (the Galveston Bay refinery) equipped with the following capacities: crude distillation, 585,000 b/d; resid processing, 142,100 b/d; catalytic cracking-hydrocracking, 258,400 b/d; alkyation, 52,800 b/d; and aromatics, 33,800 b/d, Marathon said.
Initially slated for startup in 2021, the STAR program is now scheduled for full commissioning in 2022, Fluor said.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
