Marathon reports Garyville expansion details

Marathon Oil Corp. disclosed processing-unit capacities in a report that its board had approved expansion of its Garyville, La., refinery, which the company announced a year earlier.

Nov. 8, 2006

By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Nov. 8 -- Marathon Oil Corp. disclosed processing-unit capacities in a report that its board had approved expansion of its Garyville, La., refinery, which the company announced a year earlier.

Marathon will spend an estimated $3.2 billion to add 180,000 b/d of crude capacity to the 245,000 b/d refinery (OGJ, Nov. 7, 2005, Newsletter).

In addition to a new crude and vacuum distillation unit, the project will add a 44,000-b/d delayed coker, a 70,000-b/d heavy gas-oil hydrocracker, a 65,000-b/d reformer, and a 47,000-b/d kerosene hydrotreater.

Marathon recently completed front-end engineering and design cost estimation and is working on permits from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. It expects construction to begin in mid-2007 and operations to start in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The Garyville facility, completed in 1976, is the last grassroots refinery to have been built in the US. Its expansion will boost total capacity of Marathon's seven refineries to 1.154 million b/d.