Pasadena Refinery News

Four Houston-area refineries were unable to receive crude oil from tankers on Tuesday after a portion of the Houston Ship Channel was shut due to a fire aboard an empty tanker, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. In Texas, Valero Energy Corp's Houston refinery, LyondellBasell Industries' Houston refinery, Petrobras' Pasadena refinery and Royal Dutch Shell's joint-venture Deer Park refinery have crude on-site in storage tanks and also have access to long-distance and short-haul pipeline systems. The four refineries have a combined crude oil throughput of 761,505 barrels per day (bpd), equal to 4 percent of U.S. refining capacity. The Coast Guard was conducting assessments about how long it would take to move the Aframax River…

Brazil's Senate opened an inquiry on Wednesday into alleged corruption and mismanagement at state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, a probe that could complicate President Dilma Rousseff's bid for reelection in October. A panel of senators will look into the costly purchase of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, for which critics say Petrobras paid 20 times the market value. The senators will also probe allegations that Petrobras officials took bribes in exchange for steering contracts to SBM Offshore NV…

The uproar in Brazil over state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA's purchase of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, is just "a drop in the ocean" of problems afflicting the company, a board member said on Tuesday. Concerns it paid too much for the refinery pale in comparison to the problems with the way the company has been managed since a 2010 capital increase, said Mauro Cunha, who represents minority shareholders on the board of the Rio de Janeiro-based company. Petrobras, as the company is known, has been struggling with management mistakes since 2010, when the government pressured it to raise as much as 120 billion reais ($58.3 billion) from the sale of new stock to investors, analysts say.