HollyFrontier lowers Q4 throughput number
Oil refiner HollyFrontier Corp. executives said the company’s crude throughput for the fourth quarter will be about 10% below the estimates provided 2 two months ago.
In a Jan. 3 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, HollyFrontier said throughput should average 420,000 b/d versus the 450,000-470,000 b/d forecast officials provided when discussing the Dallas-based company’s third-quarter results. The drop is the result of both weather and operational factors. Those are:
- Unit downtime at the Puget Sound refinery the company bought last fall from Shell for $614 million (OGJ Online, May 5, 2021),
- The closure of the Trans Mountain pipeline because of flooding in British Columbia, which has hurt the Puget Sound complex’s access to crude,
- Severe weather and start-up issues at HollyFrontier’s Navajo refinery after that plant’s scheduled turnaround, and
- Output cuts and severe weather at the company’s refinery in Tulsa.
At 420,000 b/d, HollyFrontier’s fourth quarter volume will be about 1% higher than its throughput from the second and third quarters. In the last 3 months of 2020, the company processed 380,000 b/d.
Shares of HollyFrontier (Ticker: HFC) were up 2.6% to $33.63 in Jan. 3 afternoon trading. They have risen about 8% over the past 6 months.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.