Baytown refinery

The Baytown refinery is a very large, high-conversion refinery located on the Houston Ship Channel in Baytown, Texas on the Gulf Coast of the US.

The refinery is 100% owned and operated by ExxonMobil.

Its location provides it with ready access to crude from the US and Canada (by pipeline) and from international sources (by tanker).  While it was designed to process medium and heavy crudes from the Gulf Coast (eg Mars) and Latin America (eg Maya), , it has evolved over time to take more light sweet domestic crude (eg WTI) as that market has grown.

Refined products can be moved across the eastern half of the US via product pipelines that start on the Gulf Coast and move across the Southeast and up to the Mid Atlantic (Colonial and Plantation) as well as inland to the Midwest (Explorer).  From its location on the Houston ship channel, Baytown can also export product to Latin America, Africa and Europe.

The refinery is co-located with an ExxonMobil chemicals plant that provides a home for petrochemical feedstocks.  

Refinery configuration

Baytown is highly complex, with coking, FCC, hydrocracking and base oil units.  This combined with hydrotreating capacity gives it the flexibility to run low cost heavy sour crude and still mostly high quality finished products.

Complexity: 11.8

Major process units:

Atmospheric distillation - 584 kbpd - 3 units: PS8 (280kbpd), PS7 (135 kbpd), PS3 (100 kbpd)

Vacuum distillation - 297 kbpd

Coker - 96 kbpd - 2 units: 

Flexicoker (42 kbpd) - Exxon Process

Delayed coker (52 kbpd) - Bechtel/Conoco process

Solvent deasphalting - 47 kbpd - Kerr McGee ROSE technology. 2-stage unit.  Uses C3/nC4 solvent. Converted from SDA. Produces FCC feed and heavy fuel oil.

FCC - 228 kbpd (8 kbpd recycle) - 2 units: FCC3 (125 kbpd), FCC2 (90 kbpd)

Hydrocracker - 30 kbpd - HCU-1 - UOP Unicracking technology

Reformer - 128 kbpd - Continuous

Naphtha hydrotreater - 155 kbpd

Kerosene hydrotreater - 132 kbpd

Distillate hydrotreater - 146 kbpd

Lube hydrotreater - 47 kbpd

VGO hydrotreater - 117 kbpd - Gofiner 55 kbpd

FCC gasoline hydrotreater - 196 kbpd - Hydrofining Unit 9 (55 kbpd)

Alkylation - 41 kbpd - Sulfuric acid - Regen provide by adjacent Ecovyst Baytown plant

Base oil plant - 32 kbpd

Pet coke - 23 kbpd

Sulfur plant - 1828 t/d

Land: 2400 acres                                   

Location

2800 Decker Dr, Baytown, TX 77520 USA

Baytown refinery website

Refinery history

1920 - Refinery commissioned by Humble Oil

1940 - Chemicals plant built

1942 - First FCC commissioned (FCCU -1)

1944 - Second FCC and first reformer commissioned

1946 - BOW plant acquired from government

1955 - Buytl rubber and butadiene plants acquired

1957 - First hydrotreating plant commissioned

1958 -  FCCU 3 commissioned

1963 - FCCU-1 decommissioned

1967 - Hydrocracker 1 commissioned

1969 - Commissioning of hydrofiners 3 and 4 and aromatics extraction unit

1971 - Hydrofiner 5 replaces hydrofiner 3

1972 - Changed name to Exxon

1977 - BTFE project added a crude unit, naphtha hydrofiner, powerformer, kerosene and distillate hydrofiners, residfiner, sulfur plant, SRU, and water treatment

1979 - Olefins plant commissioned

1986 - BRUP project added flexicoker at PS 7, new vacuum tower for PS 8, conversion of Residfiner to Gofiner, and expansion of SRU 2 and water treatment 

1987 - ROSE unit added

1993 - MTBE plants commissioned

1998 - Baseoil plant built

1999 - Merged with Mobil to form ExxonMobil 

2001 - Delayed coker commissioned, Bechtel/Conoco technology, tied to a Maya supply agreement

2011 - Hydrofining unit 9 commissioned

2018 - Steam cracker commissioned

2020 - Crude expansion (36 knpd) to process more light domestic crude