Phillips 66 Bayway Refinery Strives to Meet the World’s Energy Needs Today and Tomorrow
The Phillips 66 Bayway Refinery (Bayway) is the largest operating refinery on the East Coast of the United States, operating for over 100 years,” begins Donald Susanen, General Manager, Bayway Refinery, Phillips 66. “Our vision is to be the region’s top-performing refinery admired for our performance and people, as well as our commitment to the community.” Located on the New York Harbor in Linden, Bayway is a key asset to the State of New Jersey. Its large crude unit processes mainly light, low sulfur crude oil. It’s also home to one of the world’s largest fluid catalytic cracking units, enabling the refinery to produce enough gasoline to meet more than half of New Jersey’s annual demand.
“The Bayway complex includes hydrodesulfurization units, a naphtha reformer and alkylation unit. The refinery operation produces transportation fuels in addition to gasoline, including diesel fuels, jet fuel, as well as petrochemical feedstocks, residual fuel oil and home heating oil. The refined products are distributed to customers primarily on the East Coast via barges, trucks, pipeline, and rail cars. In addition, Bayway owns and operates a polypropylene plant that can produce up to 775 million pounds of plastic pellets each year. The polypropylene production process enables numerous product variations and is used in everyday consumer items such as plastic bottles, food containers, outdoor furniture, medical supplies, food wrap, snap packaging, cell phone covers and much more.”
Donald studied business at Pennsylvania State University and entered the industry as an entry-level operator with a privately owned company in the petrochemicals industry. “After several years of operating experience,” he continues, “I was able to transition into management roles and support an expanding business by helping lead a new facility start up, eventually becoming production manager. Today, I leverage those transferable skills in my current role. I joined Phillips 66, and over the course of the last 22 years have managed various refinery operations, across four different facilities within the Philips 66 refining portfolio, more recently, as general manager of the Billings facility and now as General Manager of Bayway since late 2022.
“We recently completed a joint company project that allows the refinery to supply an onsite cogeneration facility with off gas containing hydrogen that is blended with natural gas to fuel one of the cogeneration’s gas turbines. We’re very pleased with the project’s ability to improve energy efficiency and reduce CO₂ emissions. Phillips 66 is committed to playing a meaningful role in the energy transition and pursuing low carbon opportunities. We also recently completed a portion of a multi-phase underground piping replacement in a sensitive location under railroad infrastructure. The process utilized jack and bore technology, a trenchless method of construction, that extracts the old underground piping while also inserting the new piping without disturbing the infrastructure or railroad operations. It was a safe, less disruptive, and more cost-effective approach to executing the work.
“Over the last several years, we have fully upgraded our process control system, which is the brains of the operating facility. This brought the latest technology to the forefront of our console supervisors and process controls team, moving from coaxial cables and CRT monitors from the 1980s and 1990s to modern fault tolerant Ethernet. We’ve optimized our human machine interface graphics, implemented state-of-the-art alarm process safety management, and leveraged full redundancy of readily available hardware and virtualized software. Now, in conjunction, we are further increasing our wireless footprint throughout the facility, so we can leverage technological advances that help set Bayway apart from other facilities.
“These collective upgrades are improving operational capabilities. Our mission at Phillips 66 of providing energy and improving lives extends to every aspect of our business by promoting technology innovation and leveraging digital capabilities. We strive to increase the efficiency and resilience of our diversified operations while reducing costs. We heavily utilize data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to deliver agility, efficiency, and value in what we produce,” Donald elaborates.
“The Bayway Refinery and the industry in general is going through a workforce and technological transition. A lot of long-term working knowledge is leaving the facilities and at the same time, emerging technology is changing how we monitor and operate today. The only way to address both is by adapting. We are adjusting our approach to foster a learning environment that delivers training in a way that meets the needs of the individuals’ learning styles, while collectively benefiting from having smarter operating systems that reduce human error. We have enhanced our layers of protection and implemented better predictors to see reliability concerns as they develop but before they negatively impact the operation. Safe, reliable operations lead to improved operating efficiency. It’s not a new formula in our industry, but it is one we’ve had to adapt.”
Furthermore, Phillips 66 Bayway refinery takes a strategic approach to sustainability, which includes a focus on operating excellence, minimizing its impact on the environment, developing a high performing organization, and engaging with stakeholders. “We work hard at reducing our energy footprint,” Donald elaborates, “by reducing and optimizing our steam network, utilizing steam trap monitoring tools and reducing greenhouse gas emissions at our site. We’ve leveraged the latest monitoring technology to optimize furnace operations across the refinery and have also integrated greenhouse gas intensity metrics into our project approval process. Outside the fence line, we partner with numerous community groups that focus on environmental protection, public education and safety and well-being programs. We have a companywide sustainability and people report issued annually that gives an in-depth look at our business and showcases highlights that have positive impacts across the industry and our community.”
Likewise, Bayway has a strong history of safe and community-dependable operations. As a two-time Distinguished Safety Award winner in 2017 and 2019 by the American Fuel and Petro Chemicals Manufacturers Association, Bayway’s safety performance is considered as being in the top one-to-two percent of all refiners in the United States. “Now, if you consider our 24/7 production operation,” Donald elaborates, “this is a tough performance to match year after year. So, to build on our previous successes, Phillips 66 is heavily focused on human performance principles, a concept that not only acknowledges people will make mistakes but drives to proactively anticipate them and put controls and procedure improvements in place that avoid the incident or the injury. This approach focuses on a learning environment that fosters collaboration at all levels of the organization.
“Looking to the future, we believe refineries will continue to be critical infrastructure to meet future demand. As a company, we are thinking differently about our assets such as the feedstocks we run, the processes we use and the products that we produce. There will be a need for all types of fuels going forward and those best positioned to produce and deliver them are companies like Phillips 66 and the Bayway Refinery.
“Phillips 66 recently transitioned our San Francisco, California, facility into the Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex, one of the world’s largest renewable fuels facilities. In addition, our Humber refinery has been participating in the sustainable aviation fuel business for some time now. Phillips 66 is exploring opportunities to enter and participate in the new renewable energy segment and examining the feasibility and economics of coprocessing streams at their refineries that would qualify for renewable credits.
“There are myriad geopolitical factors and global market trends that can have an impact on Bayway’s operations and strategic decisions. Fortunately for us, we believe that Bayway is one of the most competitive refineries in the industry and our refining kit allows us to adjust for market conditions and to meet the needs of the region. Key to that is our diversified yet integrated Phillips 66 business model that provides us with flexibility and optionality. The Phillips 66 commercial and marketing teams leverage our location in the New York Harbor to minimize external influences that might be barriers to achieving our business strategy. Together, as one team, we seek opportunities to enhance margins and continue to focus on the cost structure of our refining system to ensure long-term competitiveness.”
In an industry that’s often perceived as declining in the face of renewable energy trends, Donald believes it is crucial to correct the message the public is hearing. “Our industry,” he continues, “is not going away and the global demand for fuels continues to increase. Alongside operating safely, building, and retaining talent is a top priority for our business. On the local level, we have built out relationships with key universities, and initiated workforce development relationships with high schools and local nonprofits like the Urban League of Union County here in New Jersey. From a career standpoint, these are stable high compensation jobs with an attractive total compensation package for people of all backgrounds. The energy industry can provide a path to a six-figure income. With a high school diploma, solid training, and a can-do attitude, we offer a variety of early career development and leadership programs to help our employees develop their career skills. Our long-standing college intern programs expose future employees to flexible work schedules along with an inclusive and diverse work environment at facilities like Bayway, which makes for a rewarding career that is hard to pass up.
“Bayway is a great facility because of its workforce,” he concludes, “our people understand the importance of the fuels they provide to the community and how safe, environmentally responsible operations will enable further investment and advancement within the industry. At Phillips 66 and the Bayway Refinery, providing energy and improving lives is what we aim to do.”