Chevron chairman: L.A. refinery restart near done

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Chevron Corp. (CVX.N) Chairman and Chief Executive Dave O'Reilly said on Friday restart of units at the company's 265,000 barrel per day (bpd) Los Angeles-area refinery in El Segundo, California, was nearing completion.

"Unit start-up is under way," O'Reilly said during a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss second-quarter earnings.

"Our crude unit work is just about wrapped up," O'Reilly said later in the conference call.

Chevron began a two-month overhaul of the 143,000 bpd crude distillation unit on June 1 and began restarting the unit on July 22.

Local media reports had quoted Chevron representatives saying the CDU would be operating by the middle of this week.

Chevron spokeswoman Stephanie Price said on Friday the CDU was up and running and producing products within specification, but related units at the refinery would be restarting over the weekend.

O'Reilly said during the conference call the El Segundo work was one of two projects to upgrade the heavy crude oil processing capacity at Chevron's wholly owned and joint-venture refineries.

A $1.5 billion project to add a 150,000 bpd vacuum distillation unit and a 55,000 bpd gasoil hydrocracker is expected to finish by year-end at the Yosu, South Korea, refinery owned by GS Caltex, O'Reilly said.

Chevron owns 50 percent of GS Caltex.

Chevron plans to overhaul a coking unit at the El Segundo refinery in the fourth quarter of this year as part of the upgrade in heavy crude oil processing capacity.