Through the Smoke — Kayrros Observes Nine Units Under Repair at Baton Rouge Refinery

Kayrros monitoring shows nine units remain idle and are undergoing repairs at the 502,000 b/d Baton Rouge refinery

Kayrros monitoring shows nine units remain idle and are undergoing repairs at the 502,000 b/d Baton Rouge refinery, the second largest refinery in Louisiana and the fifth largest in the US, after a fire broke out at the facility on February 11.

Figure 1. Baton Rouge Refinery, February 15 2020 19:27 UTC (Sources: Kayrros, powered by Planet [2020])

Kayrros fuses satellite imagery with other unconventional data sources to track staffing levels at all US refineries and identify in which specific units the workforce is focused in near realtime. Kayrros monitoring detected an uptick in on-site personnel at the following processing units of the Baton Rouge plant between February 11 and 12:

• One of two reformers (36.75 kb/d)
• The hydrocracker (25.7 kb/d)
• The aromatics unit (41 kb/d)
• Three of the four crude distillation units, accounting for approximately 290,000 b/d of crude distillation capacity

Figure 2. One of the two reformers as seen by satellite imagery (Sources: Kayrros, powered by Planet [2020])

Figure 3. Increased foot traffic at the reformer on February 11 with activity levels remaining high as of February 17 (Source: Kayrros)

The accident immediately affected crude and product markets. US Gulf Coast gasoline prices jumped, lifting PADD 3 refinery margins by $1.70 to 4.16 $/bbl on February 12. Margins later continued their ascent, stabilizing around 5 $/b. Price effects spread to PADD 1 as the refinery also supplies New York Harbor. Once the refinery resumes normal operations, prices and margins should re-adjust. Kayrros daily monitoring allows to anticipate the restart by assessing the rate of workforce disengagement.

Figure 4. Refinery margins by PADD, February 11 fire highlighted by the red line (Source: Kayrros)

Kayrros leverages daily telecommunication geo-localized data to provide an extensive and granular view into the refining operations across the US. More than 130 refineries are monitored at the unit-level by analyzing deviations in staffing levels and patterns to generate daily alerts. In-house experts precisely identified about 700 processing units in over 70 refineries accounting for 77% of total US refining capacity.

This article draws from a report released earlier this week to Kayrros Refinery Intelligence subscribers. Click here to register for a trial.