Beating expectations — Refinery operations scheduled to resume this week

Employees at Newcastle’s Wyoming Refining Co. have been instrumental in helping Par Pacific Holdings resume operations at the plant relatively quickly after the Feb. 12 incident that damaged a crude heater furnace, according to the company’s spokesman.

The refinery is slated to partially resume operations “in a couple of days once all the pre-startup safety procedures are completed,” according to an April 14 news release from Par Pacific Holdings, the Houston, Texas-based energy company that owns and operates the refinery. Newcastle personnel have continuously beaten expectations for scheduling, according to the release.

“This has been a remarkable well-run maintenance repair that’s gone on,” said Dallas Scholes, the director of government and public affairs for Par Pacific. “The people who’ve been doing the work have been very professional. We’ve been able to work ahead of our initial schedule because of that. There’s some really good people in your community that are working really hard on getting this facility going.”

Scholes said he was unable to specify what the “pre-startup safety procedures” entail because that question would need to be answered by someone “who’s technical” and working at the site, and those staff are currently working double shifts. But he said he would try to provide that information as soon as possible.

Scholes said the company appreciates the patience Newcastle and Weston County residents have shown as the company works to resume operations and drives large equipment through downtown Newcastle.

Full operations are slated to commence around May 1, weeks ahead of the company’s goal of Memorial Day, the release said.

The release said the large crane that “has dominated the skyline” since the days after the February incident has been disassembled and is undergoing the process to become demobilized. The refinery’s heaters’ stacks are in place, as are the new crude heater modules. The company is ahead of schedule on its assembly of the new heater, and the repaired heater is “mechanically complete and ready for start-up.”

“Despite many added man hours, 24-hour operations, and some challenging weather our employees and contractors have completed the work without a single injury,” the release said.

Scholes said the company intends for the refinery to be producing transportation fuels as soon as possible, but he doesn’t have a specific date yet for when that will be.

Refinery operations

As the News Letter Journal previously reported, Richard Creamer, Par Pacific Holdings’ executive vice president of refining and logistics, said in the company’s fourth-quarter (2024) earnings conference call that for the first six weeks of 2025, the refinery had run at about 13,000 barrels per day, and that the refinery would be idle for the rest of the first quarter. Wyoming Refining’s full capacity is 20,000 barrels per day, according to the company’s website.

Scholes told the NLJ that output fluctuates based on the availability and demand for fuel. Maintenance issues, facility operations, the amount of storage available and the availability of transportation are all factors that play into whether a refinery reaches its total operational capacity.

“We’d like to operate at that level, but very few refineries in the country ever operate at full nameplate level,” he said.

A nameplate level is the maximum amount that a facility, such as a refinery, is designed to produce, he said.

“The operational capacity can match nameplate, but that’s something you always shoot for, but it doesn’t always happen,” he said.