Operations in our refining segment began with the acquisition of the
Tyler, Texas, refinery on April 29, 2005.
Our refining segment currently operates a stand-alone, high conversion, moderate complexity independent refinery in Tyler, Texas, with a design crude distillation capacity of 60,000 bpd, along with an associated crude oil pipeline and light products loading facilities. We employ approximately 271 people in our operations in and around Tyler.
The Refinery
Our Tyler refinery is located in a niche market and primarily produces high value transportation fuels. We are the only supplier of a full range of refined petroleum products within a radius of approximately 115 miles of our location. Our refinery processes primarily light, sweet crude oils, and converts approximately 97% of the crude oil and other feedstocks into salable liquid petroleum products. In addition to locally produced crude oil grades, we are able to access other domestic and foreign crude oils available in Texas and on the Gulf Coast through the connection of our owned and leased pipelines to numerous common carrier pipeline systems that converge in Longview, Texas, enabling us to better optimize our crude supply.
The refinery is situated on a small part of our approximately 600 acres of land in northeastern Tyler. We have an unusual configuration for a refinery of this size. Our refinery includes a fluidized catalytic cracking unit and a delayed coker, enabling the refinery to produce over 90% light products and less than 2% heavy oil products. It has the ability to produce and sell a full range of gasoline, diesel, jet fuels, liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) and natural gas liquids (NGL).
Supply and Distribution
The vast majority of the transportation fuels and other products manufactured at our refinery are sold via truck directly from the refinery. We operate a nine lane transportation fuels truck rack with a wide range of additive options, including proprietary packages dedicated for use by our major oil company customers. LPG, NGL’s, and clarified slurry oil are also sold via truck from dedicated loading facilities at the refinery. We also have a pipeline connection for the sale of propane. Petroleum coke is sold primarily via rail from the refinery, with occasional truck loading for specialty or excess product. Effective January 1, 2008, we began selling renewable E-10 products at our truck rack.
Our owned and leased crude oil pipelines are connected to five crude oil pipeline systems that provide us access to East Texas, West Texas and other domestic and foreign crude oils. The majority of the crude oil purchased for the Tyler Refinery is locally-produced East Texas crude oil.
