Because of unscheduled maintenance that has become necessary on the scrubber at the Valero Paulsboro Refinery’s FCC unit, the 55,000 bpd FCC unit will be shut down late this month and will remain down until the maintenance is complete, currently estimated at mid-January.

While the FCC is shut down, the refinery will take advantage of this opportunity to bring the remainder of the plant down for maintenance. The entire plant is expected to be shut down for approximately three weeks during the longer FCC outage in order to conduct this work.

This outage will not affect staffing levels at the plant, and production units will be restored to service once the maintenance is complete. The outage will not affect the previously scheduled turnaround at Valero’s Delaware City Refinery.

Valero Energy Corporation is a Fortune 500 company based in San Antonio, with approximately 22,000 employees and 2008 revenues of $119 billion. The company owns and operates 16 refineries throughout the United States, Canada and the Caribbean with a combined throughput capacity of approximately 3 million barrels per day, making it the largest refiner in North America. Valero is also one of the nation’s largest retail operators with approximately 5,800 retail and branded wholesale outlets in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean under various brand names including Valero, Diamond Shamrock, Shamrock, Ultramar, and Beacon.   Please visit www.valero.com for more information.