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.
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
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
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