LyondellBasell shuts Texas refinery

Unscheduled maintenance will have cracker down until mid-April

By Dave Hannon -- Purchasing, 3/24/2008 10:04:00 AM

Newly combined petrochemical giant LyondellBasell said late last week that it is performing unscheduled maintenance at a refinery in Houston.

Reuters reports that fluid catalytic cracking unit’s first-stage compressor shut down last week and it could not be restarted. According to a company statement, the cracker is estimated to be out of service until mid-April. The company says the 268,000 barrels per day refinery will operate at reduced rates during this outage.

LyondellBasell was created in December when Lyondell and Basell completed their merger. The company also bought the Solvay Engineered Polymers polypropylene subsidiary from Solvay last month.