Marathon Garyville Said to Shut Crude, Coker Units in October

Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) will shut a crude unit and a coker at the Garyville refinery, the second- biggest in Louisiana, in October for planned maintenance, a person familiar with the schedule said.

The units will be shut for about 30 days of repairs, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The coker wasn’t part of a $3.9 million expansion at the plant completed in January 2010, the person said.

Shane Pochard, a Marathon spokesman based at the company’s headquarters in Findlay, Ohio, declined by e-mail to comment on the work.

The Garyville plant can process 490,000 barrels a day and runs primarily heavy, sour crude oils, according to Marathon’s website.

Crude units heat oil and divide its ingredients according to the temperatures at which they boil. Cokers use thermal processing to convert heavy refinery streams, such as vacuum bottoms, into lighter products such as naphtha and heating oil.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lynn Doan in San Francisco at ldoan6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net