Delaware City Refinery Taking More Bakken Crude

PBF Energy's Delaware City Refinery is taking more and more Bakken crude. The company announced earlier in the month the refinery's rail facilities have the ability to unload as much as 100,000 b/d, 30,000 b/d more than expected in February.

Better lucky than smart,” PBF Chairman Thomas D. O`Malley said. “We were lucky when we bought the Delaware City Refinery. They came with a large quantity of cornfields, soybean fields - in essence a surplus of about four-and-a-half thousand acres of land, and most of it was level. So we were able to put this (rail terminal) in.

The company is also adding capacity to take more heavy oil from Canada. Once complete, the facility will have the capacity to unload 100,000 b/d of Bakken crude and 80,000 b/d of Canadian crude oil.

The Delaware City Refinery is just one of several on the East and West Coasts that are bringing in Bakken crude by rail in favor of waterborne crude from other parts of the world.

As of May 23, Bakken crude was trading below $90/bbl, WTI was trading at ~$93/bbl, and Brent (international) crude was trading above $101/bbl.