The glut of gasoline within the United States isn’t stopping a brand new company within the Woodlands from planning to build a refinery in South Texas.

Christopher Moore, a Houston native, recently formed Raven Petroleum to construct a $500 million, 50,000-barrel-a-day refinery east of Laredo to export almost all of its fuels to Mexico. It might be the primary sizable refinery constructed in the United States in forty years.

The goal, Moore mentioned, is to benefit from huge quantities of Texas shale oil, just lately deregulated energy markets in Mexico and increasing demand south of the border. Mexico’s fuel consumption is rising about 3 % annually, twice the global common, in accordance with consulting and research firm Oliver Wyman.

“It makes sense from a logistical standpoint. We’re sitting right on high of our personal feedstock. We’re actually seeing that demand,” Moore mentioned of Mexico. “It’s materialized and escalated.”

Moore wants to start building by mid-2017, open by the top of 2018, and create about 300 everlasting jobs and 1,500 building positions. However the mission faces a giant hurdle: financing. Moore is imprecise on where the money would come from, saying solely that his firm is looking at a number of sources from which to borrow. For the time being, he mentioned, the undertaking has “one founder and one funder” – himself.

Moore, 54, founded Raven Petroleum a year in the past, naming it for the Celtic raven, a logo for divine providence. Moore ran his own small investment administration firm of 10 people, CNM Monetary Group, for 25 years earlier than entering into the vitality industry a few years in the past. His venture previous to Raven, a rail-to-barge oil terminal facility in Arkansas alongside the Mississippi River, was scrapped in mid-2014 because of competing tasks.

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For the refinery, Raven is working with Wink Engineering, a Baton Rouge, La. , company that focuses on refining and petrochemical work, and other partners.

Raven purchased 832 acres – the refinery would take up 200 of the acres – in Duval County near the borders of Webb and Jim Hogg counties. The rural southern Texas region between Laredo and Corpus Christi is close to railroads with entry to Mexco. Raven would construct further rail monitor to connect to the prevailing system owned by Kansas City Southern Railway to ship the petroleum products to Mexico.

The final major U.S. refinery was constructed forty years ago, Marathon’s Petroleum Corp.’s Garyville Refinery in Louisiana. Since then, U.S. refining capability has grown only by expanding current refineries.

Texas has nearly 20 refineries that can course of at the very least a hundred,000 barrels of oil each day. The nation’s largest is Motiva Enterprises’ Port Arthur Refinery, which might course of over 600,000 barrels a day.

Moore plans to begin small, with Raven refining about 50,000 barrels a day. Rob Desai, an analyst with Edward Jones in St. Louis, mentioned Raven could fill a niche. Mexico would not have a robust refining industry nor does it have ethanol mixing necessities that might add costs to the undertaking, Desai said. As well as, it would be classified as a small refinery, avoiding other U.S. laws that tack on costs.

Moore faces competitors to complete the primary new refinery since the 1970s. California-primarily based Meridian Vitality Group is planning to open a fifty five,000-barrel-a-day refinery in North Dakota in 2018. That project is additional alongside, but heavy building hasn’t begun but.