By Amy Moore

The News staff writer

The Motiva expansion project four years in the making was authorized late Thursday making Port Arthur home to the largest refinery in the nation and one of the largest in the world.

Motiva Enterprises, LLC announced Friday that its owners authorized the company to proceed with a 325,000 barrel-per-day capacity expansion at its Port Arthur refinery. The expansion will increase the refinery’s crude oil throughput capacity to 600,000 barrels-per-day.

“The expansion is designed to strengthen our nation’s supply of gasoline, diesel, aviation fuels and high quality base oils,” William B. Welte, Motiva President and Chief Executive Officer said. “As the demand for a variety of fuels continues to grow, Motiva is committed to being the supplier of choice in the eastern and southern U.S. for conventional fuels as well as biofuels.”

As General Manager for the Port Arthur facility, Todd Monette said he looks forward to the challenge the expansion provides, not only for himself, but for everyone involved.

“Construction will happen and we’ve done that before. The important thing is to do it safely and on schedule. We need to stay focused so that we end up with one 600,000 barrels-per-day facility instead of two 300,000 barrel-per-day facilities,” he said.

Monette explained that the 325,000 barrel-per-day expansion is equivalent, essentially, to building a new refinery, something the U.S. has not seen in more than 30 years.

“We’re lucky though because the people involved in this have done big projects before and we’ve been through this experience together,” he said. “Our team is up for it and we want the community to know we will do this safely, right and will do a high quality job.”

The new production capacity is expected to be online in 2010 and exploratory digging has been going on for about a year, at a cost of around $300 million. The total cost could reach $7 billion.

The expansion is projected to generate more than 4,500 construction jobs and about 300 new full-time jobs upon completion, but the refinery has had nearly 400 workers already working on the site for the past eight months.

Monette said the biggest issue that came up before the approval of the expansion was environmental concerns for the area. The company says the project will lower most types of emissions from refinery operations on a per barrel basis by utilizing advanced technology in all new system installations and replacing existing systems. The expansion of the refinery will decrease emissions from present day levels for ozone precursors, specifically nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds.

“We don’t want to intrude on our neighbors,” the general manager said. “There will be minimal impact on the city.”

The impact on gas prices, though, is still a complicated issue. Monette explained that refinery companies do not set the gas prices or know what the market will do. What they do know, he said, is supply is tight and that the nation “is not in a good place to be dependent on foreign oil.” With its expansion efforts, Monette said Motiva is bringing their resources to the table.

“The market will show how much it helps, but the key is to be a part of the energy strategy,” he said.