Valero Energy

“we signed a 5-year extension to provide hydrocarbon and water treatment products and services across Valero's North America and U.K. refineries.”

Valero extended a 5-year agreement for Baker Hughes chemical and water treatment services across its North America and U.K. refineries.

“Valero had a similar situation. And between the two of you, you've just basically offset the closure of Lyondell, Houston.”

An analyst frames Valero as a peer refiner also running record-high utilization, collectively offsetting a competitor refinery closure.

“We thought coming into the year, you'd see less demand with Lyondell going down, but that was kind of offset.”

Valero references LyondellBasell's decision to shut down its Houston-area refinery as a factor behind early-year quality-differential headwinds, implying reduced regional refining capacity for LyondellBasell.

“the Lyondell refinery shutting down in The US Gulf Coast put 200 to 250,000 barrels a day of additional heavy sour barrels on the market”

LyondellBasell's Gulf Coast refinery shutdown removed capacity and pushed additional heavy sour crude barrels onto the market, a competitive supply dynamic Valero cited as bullish for crude differentials.

“Yes, so I think the only thing we can see is you’ve definitely seen the dynamic in the market of Lyondell stopping to buy and they were buying a lot of especially a lot of Canadian. And so, we’ve seen more of those barrels become available to us as they backed off the market.”

LyondellBasell idling refinery capacity and stopping crude purchases (including heavy Canadian barrels) freed up feedstock supply that Valero was able to capture.