US Crude Outlook-Refinery restarts seen supportive

NEW YORK, Feb 4 (Reuters) - The restart of major units at
two large Gulf Coast refineries should help offset some of the
recent weakness in crude oil demand on U.S. cash crude markets
this week, traders and brokers said Monday.

The Shell/Pemex 334,000 barrels per day Deer Park, Texas
refinery began restarting units including the fluid catalytic
cracker after a major turnaround on Sunday, according to a
filing with Texas regulators.

BP told regulators it was planning to restart the largest
of the three crude units at its Texas City, Texas refinery by
Feb. 15. The restart is a key step in returning processing
rates at the 470,000 bpd refinery to over 400,000 bpd for the
first time since Sept. 2005.

"Deer Park and Texas City are two of the biggest plants on
the Gulf Coast so it should help mop up some of the sour
barrels that have been floating around," noted a Gulf Coast
broker.

The spread between deepwater sour Mars MRS- and Light
Louisiana Sweet LLS-, which was pegged at $11.25 a barrel on
Friday, is likely to narrow as these refineries restart.

Weak refinery margins continue to weigh on crude demand,
however, which should limit gains, said a trader with an
independent.

Elsewhere inland markets have yet to see much impact from
the unplanned shutdown of Syncrude's 350,000 bpd upgrader in
the Alberta oil sands.

Traders said regular spring maintenance and economic run
cuts at some Midwestern refineries was mitigating the impact of
the outage.
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See <REF/MARGIN1> for Reuters' generic refining margins

See CL-1=R for the WTI front/second month spread

See CL-LCO1=R for front month WTI/Brent futures spread

See BFO- for Reuters' assessment of Dated Brent

See <0#FRT-> for Reuters assessed tanker rates

See BRNV for assessed domestic crude differentials

See PPGR for outright U.S. cash crude prices

See [REF/US] for a list of U.S. refinery outages

See [EIA/S] for U.S. EIA inventory reports and forecasts

See [CRU/TU] for recent cash crude deals
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(Reporting by Bruce Nichols; Editing by David Gregorio)