Restart will take time — Leadership outlines plans to bring refinery back online by Memorial Day
The Feb. 12 incident at Wyoming Refining Company damaged a crude heater furnace, and it will take months for the operation to be back at full speed, Par Pacific CEO and President William Monteleone said in the company’s fourth-quarter (2024) earnings conference call on Feb. 26.
“We are most thankful that no one was seriously injured during the event,” he said. “I would like to commend the entire Wyoming team for their dedication and resilience in maintaining the facility in sub-zero temperatures for nearly a week.”
He said the company is working to fully resume operations before Memorial Day. Restarting the facility safely and on time is one of the company’s top priorities for the year.
Richard Creamer, executive vice president of refining and logistics, said in the call that the company’s preliminary assessments point to resuming partial operations at first, “targeting 50% utilization by mid-April and full rates before Memorial Day and ahead of the summer driving season.”
He said the company expects to be able to start up the crude unit at reduced rates and maintain it at 50%, while allowing the rest of the refinery to run, but at lower levels. The company is rebuilding the crude heater for the main unit, which would allow the refinery to reach full capacity.
For the first six weeks of 2025, the refinery had run at about 13,000 barrels per day, and the refinery will be idle for the rest of the first quarter, according to Creamer. The company is not concerned about meeting its contractual obligations, Monteleone said.
Dallas Scholes, director of government and public affairs, told the News Letter Journal that the refinery typically produces unleaded gasoline, premium gasoline, jet fuel, ultra-low-sulfur diesel, propane, butane and an agricultural fertilizer.
“We are considered critical infrastructure and have contracts with many customers, in both the private and government sectors,” Scholes told the NLJ. “Because of national security concerns and nondisclosure agreements we are not able to share any additional details about our contracts. However, we are focused on delivering the fuel each community needs.”
Shawn Flores, senior vice president and chief financial officer, said the company has property and PI (personal injury) insurance and plans to manage the incremental costs within its capital expenditures guidance of about $210 million to $240 million for 2025. The amount of lost profit will depend on how the market responds, he said. The refinery will end up running about 7,000 to 9,000 barrels overall less per day for the quarter than its typical run rates for a first quarter.
Scholes told the NLJ that last week the company began its meticulous process of determining both what happened in the incident and what work is required.
A Feb. 27 company update said that subject matter experts, engineers and contractors are helping Wyoming Refining Company personnel conduct the post-incident assessment and surveys. Work plans and assessment of the freeze damage that occurred the week following the incident are continuing at the same time.
“Teams carefully have been investigating the incident and will make sure our entire company learns from this experience so we can improve our safety and reliability at every one of our facilities,” Scholes told the NLJ.
The company will continue to deal with weather changes and challenges, such as possible snowfall, as they arise. Scholes said he is proud of the team in Newcastle and how professionally they are dealing with the situation and the grueling workload.
Flame appears from refinery after power disruption
On March 1, Wyoming Refining Company experienced a disruption in electrical service from Black Hills Power that caused a full loss of power to all equipment, but no environmental releases, fire, injuries or other damage, according to a March 2 update from the company.
The power disruption, which lasted 2 to 3 seconds, caused an orange and yellow flame to appear, according to Dallas Scholes, Par Pacific’s director of government and public affairs. He said that with the limited equipment that is running, it took about five hours for the systems to be brought back to normal.
“Personnel were able to restart the cooling water and steam systems once it was deemed safe,” the company update said.
According to the update, the company is communicating with Black Hills Power “to understand the disruption in service to the facility.”
Scholes told the News Letter Journal that when the refinery is fully functioning, it can take several days for systems to return to normal after a power outage.