Project Profile
Value: US$$400-million (phase 1) US$750 million - 1 billion (phase 2)
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Capacity: 45,000 barrels per day (bpd)
Start-up year: 2018
The Woods Cross Refinery is located north of Salt Lake City, Utah and has a crude oil capacity of 45,000 bpd. The Woods Cross Refinery is a high conversion refinery that has advantaged access to regional sweet and black wax crudes as well as pipeline access to Canadian crude oils. Woods Cross refined products are marketed primarily in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, and eastern Washington.
In 2012, HollyFrontier Corporation planned to expand capacity at its 31,000 bpd Woods Cross, Utah refinery to 45,000 bpd with an expected completion in late 2014. The expansion scopes included the relocation / revamp of crude, fluid catalytic cracking and polymerization units from a subsidiary of Western Refining Inc.\'s Bloomfield, NM refinery to Woods Cross as well an expansion of the Woods Cross diesel hydrotreater and investment in associated utilities and offsites. The cost of this expansion was approximately US$225 million.
In conjunction with the expansion, HollyFrontier signed a 10-year, 20,000 bpd crude oil supply agreement with Newfield Exploration Company. This agreement, which commences upon completion of the expansion, will supply black and yellow wax crude oil produced in the nearby Uinta Basin region to the Woods Cross refinery.
Designed to increase the refinery’s processing capacity by 14,000 bpd to its current capacity of 45,000 bpd capacity, Phase 1 of the Woods Cross expansion was commissioned in June 2014. In fourth-quarter 2014, HollyFrontier completed an FCC liquid-yield improvement project at El Dorado, which raised incremental liquid-product yields at the unit by 1,000 bpd. The project, which cost about US$9 million, included installation of feed nozzle technology as well as a riser termination device. With the crude expansion and installation of the site’s second FCC, the refinery is equipped with the following capacities:
• Crude distillation: 45,000 bpd.
• FCC: 18,000 bpd.
• Alkylation-polymerization: 6,000 bpd.
• Gas oil hydrocracking: 15,000 bpd.
• Distillate hydrotreating: 10,000 bpd.
Alongside the relocation-revamp of an 8,000 bpd fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) and polymerization units from Western Refining Inc.’s shuttered refinery in Bloomfield, the US$420-430 million project was to include the addition of a rail-loading rack for intermediates and finished products associated with refining waxy crude oil. While the expanded crude unit was designed to run primarily Utah West crudes, HollyFrontier currently is modifying the plant to enable increased runs of Canadian Syncrude as a result of crude pricing issues in the Uintah basin. HollyFrontier has scheduled a turnaround of the Woods Cross refinery’s older FCC during Q4 2016.
HollyFrontier is also considering a potential Phase 2 expansion at Woods Cross but has yet to reveal further details regarding the status of the possible Phase 2 expansion, which would expand capacity to 60,000 bpd by 2018 at an estimated cost of US$750 million-1 billion. The Phase 2 expansion would involve increases to both crude and vacuum distillation capacities as well as installation of a hydro-isom unit, a hydrogen plant, and a distillate hydrotreater. The project is expected to be completed by 2018.
Operators:
HollyFrontier: 100% interest