The Wood River Refinery is an

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, lique ...

located in

Roxana, Illinois Roxana is a village in Madison County, Illinois, United States. The population was 1,542 at the 2010 census. A majority of the land in Roxana is taken up by the Wood River Refinery, an oil refinery operated by Phillips 66. The refinery was origi ...

, approximately north of

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

, on the east side of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

. The refinery is currently owned by

Phillips 66 The Phillips 66 Company is an American Multinational corporation, multinational energy company headquartered in Westchase, Houston, Westchase, Houston, Houston, Texas. Its name, dating back to 1927 as a trademark of the Phillips Petroleum Compan ...

and

Cenovus Energy Cenovus Energy Inc. (pronounced se-nō-vus) is an integrated oil and natural gas company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. Cenovus was formed in 2009 when Encana Corporation split into two distinct companies, with Cenovus becoming focused on oi ...

and operated by the joint-venture company WRB Refining, LLC (WRB). WRB was formed on 1 July 2007, with

Encana Ovintiv Inc. is a hydrocarbon exploration and production company organized in Delaware and headquartered in Denver, United States. It was founded and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, under its previous name Encana. It was the largest energy c ...

taking a 49% interest in Wood River and also

's Borger refinery. Encana subsequently spun off oil sands producer Cenovus and ConocoPhillips spun off Phillips 66. In return for a 49% stake in the refinery, ConocoPhillips gained a joint interest in two Alberta

oil sands Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and wate ...

(bitumen) heavy oil projects: Christina Lake (Alberta) and Foster Creek. ConocoPhillips’ interest was sold to Cenovus in May 2017, leaving Cenovus the sole owner and operator of the assets.Cenovus completes acquisition of assets in Western Canada from ConocoPhillips
/ref> Cenovus uses SAGD ( steam-assisted gravity drainage) technology at those sites. The complex is capable of refining of

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...

per day and is the largest refinery operated by Phillips 66. Oil is supplied from the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, and domestic sources through pipelines. The facility produces of

gasoline Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic co ...

, of

diesel Diesel may refer to: * Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression * Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines * Diesel locomotive, a railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engin ...

and

jet fuel Jet fuel or aviation turbine fuel (ATF, also abbreviated avtur) is a type of aviation fuel designed for use in aircraft powered by gas-turbine engines. It is colorless to straw-colored in appearance. The most commonly used fuels for commercial a ...

s, as well as other products including

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...

propane Propane () is a three-carbon alkane with the molecular formula . It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure, but compressible to a transportable liquid. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum refining, it is commonly used a ...

, and chemical feedstocks. A new four-drum

coker unit A coker or coker unit is an oil refinery processing unit that converts the residual oil from the vacuum distillation column into low molecular weight hydrocarbon gases, naphtha, light and heavy gas oils, and petroleum coke. The process thermally c ...

, part of Wood River Refinery's Coker and Refinery Expansion (CORE) was completed in November 2011. The new coker has a capacity of 75,000 barrels per day and is expected to expand the capacity to handle the bitumen from the Alberta oil sands by nearly 700%. The new Wood River coker's processing capacity is approximately 200,000 - 220,000 barrels per day. The CORE project took about three years to build, with a total cost of US $3.8 billion (US $1.9 billion to Cenovus), and has increased clean product yield by 5% to approximately 85%. While the expansion was undertaken specifically to handle heavy oil imported from Alberta, the refined transportation fuels products are destined for the U.S. Midwest market, including St. Louis and Chicago not Canada. An RO filtration system upgrade to treat boiler water was also completed in 2011. 3500 total feet of pipe on 800 feet of modular pipe rack was installed along movable trailers containing the filtration system. This expansion increased the amount of steam available to the refinery. Thermal cracking, stripping and power generation are some of the major processes within a refinery that use steam. Wood River Refinery was originally built by Shell in 1917. In the late 1990s, Shell and Texaco merged their downstream segments to form the Motiva (with Saudi national oil company Saudi Aramco) and Equilon joint ventures. During a prolonged period of low refining profit margins, Equilon sold the refinery to Tosco in 2003. Shortly thereafter, Phillips Petroleum acquired Tosco. When Conoco and Phillips merged, the refinery became an asset of ConocoPhillips. Multiple ownership of refineries is not uncommon in the United States, where many refineries (in original form) predate World War II.

References

External links

Wood River Refinery History Museum

Phillips 66 refineries Central Corridor

{{coord, 38.841, -90.066, dim:1800_region:US-IL, display=title Phillips 66 Buildings and structures in Madison County, Illinois Companies based in Madison County, Illinois Energy infrastructure completed in 1917 Energy infrastructure in Illinois Oil refineries in the United States

See also

References

External links