Ghost Train — Phillips 66 Sees Efficiencies at the Sweeny Complex

Phillips 66’s Sweeny Complex includes refining, midstream and petrochemical facilities, all located in and around Sweeny, TX, about 65 miles south of Houston. It serves as a model for how a well-designed facility can deliver operating and financial efficiencies. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll review the complex’s capabilities, examine how this important and interconnected asset performs within the Phillips 66 system, and consider how the organization’s refining expertise and the stellar performance of its four fractionators effectively negates the need for a fifth unit, the “Ghost Train” referenced in today’s headline.

We should note up front that while in European and Asian countries it’s common for refineries and petrochemical plants to be located within a single, interconnected complex — mostly due to their steam crackers‘ traditionally heavy dependence on refinery-sourced naphtha as a feedstock — that approach is far less typical in the U.S., in part because crackers in the Lower 48 more commonly use lower-cost ethane, propane and other NGLs (not naphtha) as their primary feedstocks. Therefore, the connectivity of Sweeny’s midstream assets (fractionators) is a notable competitive advantage.

Now, on to the Sweeny Complex. Its focal asset is the 265-Mb/d refining unit producing traditional transportation fuels from a slate of sweet and sour crudes. It also has four fractionators with a combined capacity of 550 Mb/d. (More on these later.) The associated and co-located chemical units — owned by Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem), a 50/50 joint venture with Chevron — produce ethylene, propylene, 1-hexene and polyethylene. There are also multiple inbound and outbound pipelines, aboveground tanks and subterranean storage, all of which support the site’s refining, fractionation and chemical activities.

Sweeny’s operational and logistical advantages arise in part from the combination of integrated refining, midstream and chemical facilities, pipelines and processing systems, all intersecting on the Texas Gulf Coast. We’ve touched on the refining, chemical and NGL aspects of this facility separately in other blogs, including Let’s Work Together.

Building a highly integrated hydrocarbon processing system does not happen by accident or overnight. It evolves strategically over time and in Sweeny’s case resides a unique origin story. As shown in Figure 1 below, the initial Sweeny refining unit was established by the U.S. government in 1942 as part of the war effort. The facility was located well inland (about 20 miles from the Gulf) to protect it from the risk of direct naval attack. The unit was operated by the government through the conclusion of World War II. Following the war, the unit was idled for a couple of years then acquired by a Philips 66 predecessor in 1947.