Spill temporarily closes Houston Ship Channel

OREANDA-NEWS. June 15, 2015. A naphtha spill temporarily closed the Houston Ship Channel from Light 152 to Greensport for about 2 hours beginning at 12:55pm ET today, according to a coast guard report.

The spill was reported from a barge at a Chevron facility heard to be ChevronPhillips' chemical facility at the Stolthaven Terminal. The spill was reported cleaned up about two hours later, with that portion of the ship channel re-opened to traffic around 3:18pm ET.

The barge owner and the type of naphtha loaded on the vessel have yet to be identified. Chevron had been an active heavy N+A naphtha seller this week on the Mississippi River, but was deemed quiet in the Houston area. The River-area selling was accompanied by unconfirmed news of a reformer outage at its Pascagoula refinery.