Texas City Refinery
BP Texas City processes many kinds of crude oil into a variety of fuels, chemical feedstock and other refined petroleum products for customers around the United States and is currently initiating an extensive maintenance and modernization program.
Texas City is BP’s largest refinery worldwide and the third-largest refinery in the United States, with a crude capacity of about 460,000 barrels per day. The facility is capable of producing about 10 million gallons per day of premium and unleaded regular gasoline – including low-sulfur Amoco Ultimate® fuels.
Located just south of Houston, the plant includes 29 oil refining units and four chemical units spread over a 1,200 acre site. The Texas City refinery makes about 2.5 percent of all the gasoline sold in the United States – enough to fill the tank of a car every seven seconds, and with enough blends of gasoline to meet regional standards for markets in the Southeast, East Coast and Midwest.
March 23, 2005
Following the March 23, 2005 explosion and fire at the facility's isomerization unit, BP took actions to put the Texas City Site on a sustainable course to deliver safe, consistent and dependable results. BP appointed a new business unit leader and installed a new leadership team at the site. BP has fully cooperated with regulatory agencies and investigative bodies to help further determine the causes and to prevent such an event from occurring in the future.New office space
In July 2005, BP agreed to lease nearly 100,000 square feet of former retail space in Texas City and convert it into office space. The company elected to relocate more than 400 workers as part of a sweeping plan to eliminate temporary structures from its local refinery and chemical plant. BP Texas City opened the new state-of-the-art office, called the Texas City Office, in November.A safe and simplified objective
BP Texas City is committed to operating a safe, simplified refinery that generates consistent, dependable business results and a sustainable future for the site, its employees, shareholders, and the communities in which it operates.
Markets for BP Texas City products are robust. In recent years, many states and localities seeking to improve air quality have set special requirements for gasoline sold in their jurisdiction. These requirements can vary widely from place to place and from one season to the next. Texas City historically has met these regional and local standards for gasoline.
About 80 percent of the refinery’s fuels is shipped out of Texas City via pipeline. Another 20 percent is delivered to markets around the country via marine transport.
Texas City also can produce about 100,000 barrels a day of diesel fuel destined for customers in the Southeast, East Coast and the Midwest, with some 40,000 barrels of jet fuel shipped daily from the refinery.
Chemicals
Texas City’s four chemical units are world-class producers of metaxylene and paraxylene chemical intermediates, which are then further processed at other facilities. The plant is the number-one producer of paraxylene (PX) in the world. PX is used to make polyester fibers, PET bottles, electronic recording tape, photographic film and cooking pouches. About 60 percent of this product is shipped to BP’s chemical plant in South Carolina, and another 40 percent is exported to customers in Mexico, Brazil and the Far East.A small city
The Texas City refinery employs about 1,800 full and part-time workers. Annual payroll for direct employees exceeds $120 million. The facility also uses many contract employees, ranging from 1,000 to 5,000 per day during peak turnaround maintenance periods.Related links
