El Paso Refinery

About

The El Paso refinery is located approximately three miles east of downtown El Paso, just south of Interstate 10. The refinery is located on approximately 555 acres. The refinery was originally two facilities but the operations of the two plants were combined in 1993 and continue to operate as one entity today.

The "North" refinery was originally built by Standard Oil of California (later Chevron) in 1928 and was significantly modernized in 1957. It was subsequently modernized again in 1972 with the addition of a naphtha hydrotreater, catalytic reformer and sulfur plant.

The "South" refinery was originally built by the Texas Company (later Texaco) in 1931 and was significantly modernized in 1954. The facility was subsequently sold in 1986 to El Paso Refinery, L.P. (EPR) and was again significantly modernized and expanded to more than three times its previous operating capacity between 1986 and 1991. As a result of this modernization and expansion, the most significant of Western's major process units are essentially new.

The El Paso refinery has a crude oil throughput capacity of approximately 125,000 barrels per day, FCCU capacity of 29,500 barrels per day, alkylation capacity of 10,000 barrels per day and reforming capacity of 18,000 barrels per day.

The marketing terminal has a loading rack with an estimated maximum capacity of 36,000 barrels per day.

Crude oil is delivered to our El Paso refinery via a 450-mile crude oil pipeline owned and operated by Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, (Kinder Morgan). The system handles both sweet (WTI) and sour (WTS) crude oil. The main trunkline into El Paso is used solely for the supply of crude oil to us, on a published tariff. We acquired the crude oil pipeline in 2003 from Chevron Corporation. In 2004, we sold the crude oil pipeline to Kinder Morgan, and we simultaneously entered into a 30-year crude oil transportation agreement with Kinder Morgan. The crude oil pipeline has access to the majority of the producing fields in the Permian Basin, which gives us access to a plentiful supply of WTI and WTS crude oil from fields with long reserve lives.

We also have access to blendstocks and refined products from the Gulf Coast through the Magellan South System pipeline that runs from the Gulf Coast to our refinery.

Products are delivered from Western's El Paso refinery by truck, rail, and pipeline. There are three product pipelines out of El Paso. Plains Pipeline operates a line to Belen and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a line to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Kinder Morgan operates a line from El Paso to Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona. Western ships on all of these pipeline systems.

The refinery has storage capacity of approximately 4.3 million barrels. [1]