PBF Energy first-quarter earnings triple 2013 mark
Delaware City Refinery owner PBF Energy Inc. reported $140.7 million in net income for the first quarter of the year Wednesday, triple it's performance in the same period last year.
The results were among details released during an investor briefing that also saw a PBF founder say in the strongest terms yet that his company is on the alert for possible new refinery acquisitions.
PBF Executive Chairman Thomas D. O'Malley said during the briefing that the company had worked to develop a strong balance sheet as it transitioned from a venture heavily owned by two private equity companies into "a true publicly traded company" built around an "unmatched" operation at Delaware City and Paulsboro, N.J.
"At the same time, the company is once again set up to grow. We look at every opportunity that's out there," O'Malley said. "We'll limit at the present time our view of growth to North America, but we want to have all options on the table."
"Our team has experience across the refining environment in the United States and particularly in the great state of California," O'Malley said. "We know the marketplace out there, we know how to operate refineries out there. We've done it before and certainly it's an area where we have an interest."
PBF took in an average 102,400 barrels a day of rail-delivered crude oil at Delaware City for the quarter, including 40,100 barrels of heavy Canadian oil sand crude. The Delaware plant has a total processing capacity of 210,000 barrels per day, including 191,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
Company officials attributed much of the quarter's profitable results to reliable operations, savings on rail-delivered, low-cost crude from the upper Midwest and Canada, and the flexibility to refine a wide range of heavy and high-sulfur crudes at the two East Coast sites.
"In conjunction with relatively stable operations, given the sometimes adverse operating conditions, the landed cost of crude, especially on the East Coast, was the single largest driver of our strong results for the quarter," PBF Chief Executive Officer Tom Nimbley said.
The company reported $143.9 million in net income for all of 2013, and $492.5 million in 2012.
Operations in Delaware have been a focus of criticism from some civic and environmental groups concerned about public safety risks as Norfolk Southern Corp. moves hundreds of rail cars along its Delaware track daily, some passing near residential areas. The company also is under pressure to update parts of its wastewater treatment plant, which now draws more than 300 million gallons of water daily from the Delaware River for cooling.
O'Malley said that the company is making almost instantaneous changes in crude oil supply flows as expanding use of North American crudes at Gulf Coast refineries drives down the price of imports from Mexico and other sources. Those low-cost crudes can have a wide range of densities and sulfur contents.
Delaware City, built in the 1950s to handle heavy, sour crude from the Middle East, has "just terrific flexibility in it," O'Malley said, "and that's going to prove, in my view, to be a great driver of profitability."
Although the company's new rail offloading terminal for crude oil tankers will have an up-to 210,000 barrel per day capacity by the end of the year, company officials indicated that market prices will determine the mix of rail and waterborne crude intake.
Contact Jeff Montgomery at 463-3344 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com