Crude Summit: Alon Big Spring switches back to WTS

OREANDA-NEWS. US independent refiner Alon USA has increased runs of West Texas Sour (WTS) crudes at its 73,000 b/d refinery in Big Spring, Texas, less than a year after expanding the refinery's ability to run lighter crudes.

Steady attractive values for asphalt, compared to naphtha, have led the refiner back into sour feedstocks, chief executive Paul Eisman said at the Argus Americas Crude Summit in Houston.

Alon last year modified the refinery to process greater volumes of light, sweet crude increasingly available in the Permian basin. The company increased its crude throughput by 3,000 b/d in June. Big Spring now produces naphtha in excess of the refinery's reformer capacity. But Alon can blend the naphtha directly into gasoline or sell the feedstock.

Asphalt had commanded poor prices as a secondary product. But prices for asphalt move much more sluggishly than swiftly dropping crude prices, increasing the material's relative value.

"What we're seeing, and I don't know how long that's going to last, but asphalt is worth more than naphtha," Eisman said.

Big Spring will continue to benefit from increased crude flexibility, and the Permian will prove more resilient than some forecasts suggest, he said. Prices may not be as attractive for Big Spring as in the recent past, but the refiner will continue to benefit from volatility caused by pipeline or other refinery outages, he said.

"It's nice to be at the head of the pipeline rather than being at the end of the pipeline," Eisman said.