Update: Mexico's Minatitlan refinery back online, Olmeca still down
Mexico's 285,000-bpd Minatitlan refinery was in the process of restarting on Thursday, while the 340,000-bpd Olmeca refinery was still offline, sources told said on Thursday.
Both Minatitlan in Veracruz, one of Mexico's oldest refineries, and Olmeca in Tabasco, the country's newest, were knocked out of service on Monday after heavy rainfall caused power outages at the plants, the sources said.
Minatitlan was coming back online on Thursday, one of the sources said.
The Olmeca refinery, also called Dos Bocas, is expected to attempt to restart as soon as Thursday, the source said. However, the restart attempts will be conditional on the completion of damage assessment by crews onsite, they noted.
The sources requested anonymity to discuss confidential information. Pemex, Mexico's state energy company, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Olmeca refinery, which is yet to reach full capacity, was forced to shut down all processing units on Monday after heavy rainfall directly impacted a compressor on the 94,000-bpd gasoline-producing unit, industry monitor IIR Energy confirmed on Wednesday.
Market participants expect a prolonged outage at the plant could leave Mexico short of its immediate gasoline requirements, raising the country's demand for cargos from the United States, its largest fuel supplier.
Mexico has long struggled to operate its aging refineries efficiently, and the plants face frequent outages while struggling to process the heavy crude that Pemex pumps.
Latest official data showed Olmeca produced over 57,000 bpd of gasoline and about 77,000 bpd of diesel in July.
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