Valero Is Buying the Refinery That Already Stopped
LyondellBasell agreed on Thursday to sell the Houston refinery site to a Valero subsidiary for $320.5 million, twenty months after refining there stopped. Also on the file: the same quarter cost LYB $76 million to shut a European propylene oxide joint venture while Channelview ran at 110 percent, Olin's Huntsman close slipped into 2027, Eastman closed a German film line and is repricing everything, and the only French strontium chromate producer now enters at zero.
A site that has not refined a barrel since February 2025 just fetched $320.5 million.
"What is a stopped plant worth to the operator next door?"
Enough that somebody wants it standing.
Valero Is Buying What Lyondell Already Shut
LyondellBasell filed on Friday that it entered an agreement on October 29 with a subsidiary of Valero Energy to sell Houston Refining, L.P., the wholly owned subsidiary that holds the former Houston refinery site and related assets, for $320.5 million.
Close is expected in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory and other customary conditions.
Read what the filing leaves out.
No barrels per day, no unit list, no acreage, no headcount, no gain or loss, and no word on which assets on that site are still running. LYB disclosed a price and a closing quarter and stopped there.
So the buyer-side question stays open, and worth putting to your own rep: is Valero buying a deepwater site on the ship channel, or buying units?
The rest of this brief is for subscribers.
The capacity math, the trade-flow read, and what it means for the products you buy.
$50 a month, or $400 a year.
Already a subscriber? Sign in