BP Texas City Refinery FCC Unit Start-Up May Last Until Oct. 7

By Stephen Voss and Aaron Clark

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, Europe's second-largest oil company by market value, is starting fluid catalytic cracking unit 1 at its refinery in Texas City, Texas, which was shut because of Hurricane Ike, according to a filing with state regulators.

The unit, which makes gasoline, may take until Oct. 7 to complete the start-up process, the report to Texas environmental regulators said. A person familiar with the plant's operations said yesterday that a crude unit started, adding that utilities and steam have been restored. It was too early to predict when the plant will return to normal rates, according to the person.

BP said in earlier reports to state regulators that it began restarting a sulfur recovery unit, an alkylation unit and a residual hydrotreater at Texas City.

The sulfur unit start-up would end Sept. 24 and the alkylation unit would be restarted by Oct. 5, BP said. The start-up of the hydrotreater would be completed by Oct. 12.

The refinery can process 475,000 barrels of crude oil a day, according to the U.S. Energy Department.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Clark in New York at aclark27@bloomberg.net; Stephen Voss in London at sev@bloomberg.net