[SecAmndmt]

I am starting to wonder what really went down with the Texas grid last week.

One or more refineries may be down until spring???

[Jolla]

I wonder what gas will cost next month

[Hootowl99]

I have worked at several of the refineries mentioned in the report and am acquainted with most of the others. I suspect that what is going on is that due to the shutdowns by cold weather + lack of natural gas for electricity and steam production, they suffered both known and unknown damage to equipment and pipelines.

Every operating unit, shop and building in the facility has a cold weather prep procedure that is executed when temps get low. The length of freezing weather and the extreme low temps took things beyond what they were designed to handle.

A cold startup process is complicated - You don’t just flip a switch and poof it’s running again. This is a big deal. Even in hurricane shutdowns, the power plants in a gulf coast refinery or chemical plant are kept online at a low rate to keep a maintenance level of steam and electricity going to the operating units. This is why these facilities are typically back in substantially full production 8 to 12 hours after the all clear is issued.

In addition, since they are shut down anyway, the refineries may be undertaking some planned maintenance that otherwise would be scheduled later. A less likely factor perhaps in play could be the change over from winter to summer fuel formulations although it seems too early for this.

My opinions...