Valero Preparing to Resume Operations at Two Refineries in Texas

Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) said late Tuesday it's getting ready to initiate a re-start of operations at two refineries near Corpus Christi, Texas, that it shut down before Hurricane Harvey hit Friday night.

"Valero's Three Rivers and Corpus Christi refineries are making preparations to resume operations and are in close coordination with our business partners and port operations to assess necessary transportation and logistics infrastructure needed to support the restart," it said. Those two refineries have a combined processing capacity of about 380,000-barrels-a-day.

The announcement from Valero comes after another refinery in Corpus Christi, the 296,000-barrel-a-day Flint Hills Resources plant, said ealier Tuesday it is also working on a re-start.

Analysts say it's important for the refineries in the Corpus Christi area, which were left relatively unscathed by Harvey as the storm quickly shifted east to Houston, to re-start as soon as possible. Many other Texas refineries further east, including the nation's two largest refineries, Saudi Aramco's Motiva, and Exxon Mobil Corp's Baytown, remain shut or are operating at reduced levels.

In all, around 2.5 million barrels a day of refining capacity has been taken offline due to Hurricane Harvey, which was downgraded to a Tropical Storm over the weekend but has hovered over Houston for days, creating historic floods.

Valero also said in the statement that its other Gulf Coast refineries, which include ones in the Houston and Port Arthur areas, are still operating.

Write to Dan Molinski at dan.molinski@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 29, 2017 20:53 ET (00:53 GMT)