U.S. oil refining capacity rises for second year in a row, reaching > 18.3 MMbpd
6/18/2024 12:00:00 PM
U.S. crude oil refining capacity rose 1.5% to 18.38 MMbpd this year, a government report showed on Friday as a major new expansion in Texas boosted capacity. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the figures indicate capacity online as of Jan. 1, which reflected for the first time the startup last year of an about 250,000 bpd expansion to ExxonMobil's Beaumont, Texas, refinery.
The gain was a second year in a row of increases due to expansions at existing operations. Still, processing capacity at the start of 2024 remained more than 500,000 bpd below the 2019 peak of 18.98 MMbpd, which came before a wave of plant closures and conversions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Marathon Petroleum Corp remained the largest refiner in the U.S., able to process up to 2.95 MMbpd, or 16% of the country's total, at its 13 U.S. plants, the EIA report showed. Valero Energy Corp was the second-largest U.S. refiner by volume with its 2.21 MMbpd capacity equal to about 12% of the total.
ExxonMobil was third largest with nearly 1.95 MMbpd after a $2-B expansion to its Beaumont refinery came online in spring, 2023, raising that facility's processing capacity to 609,000 bpd. The fourth largest refiner, Phillips 66, can process 1.39 MMbpd, while the fifth and sixth largest - PBF Energy and Chevron Corp - can each process more than 1 MMbpd.
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