Chad Burgin at Marathon Petroleum in Garyville, LA - Summer 2007

The day I got the call from Marathon to inform me of my co-op offer, I was extremely excited, especially after she told me I would be coming to the Garyville, LA refinery. Marathon is ranked at #30 on the Fortune 500 Company list with 2006 Revenue of $60 Billion. According to www.marathon.com , "the Garyville refinery has the capacity to convert 245,000 barrels of crude oil per day into products such as gasoline, No. 1 and No. 2 fuel oils. Sulfur, asphalt, propane/propylene, isobutane, kerosene and coke are manufactured as secondary products." Even though Garyville is the largest of Marathon's seven refineries across the Midwest and Southeast, a $3.2 billion expansion is in progress to increase the barrel per day capacity by 180,000 barrels.

Chad Burgin at Marathon

My summer co-op with Marathon Petroleum was an experience full of both in depth, complex projects that are still in the planning stage and those projects that required less than one week to set into motion. My first assignment of the summer was a project, from my mentor Paul Wehmer, in the Alkylation Unit to design a piping system, which including the use of a liquid eductor for removing the catalyst Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) acid from the Storage tank and introducing it to the unit.   

View from the top of the refinery

In addition to my eductor project, I spent a large amount of my summer working with Christina Harvick on her Crude Unit Caustic Jumpover Project. This project is going to create an individual caustic line for the Crude Unit instead of one single line being used for two units. This project has a Design and Estimate (D&E) written, which will be present to staff in the upcoming weeks for approval.

Another project I had is a refinery wide safety gate installation project. This project, which originated from the Safety Department at Marathon and passed to me by Paul Wehmer , entail installing about 1500 double frame safety gate on vertical ladder openings over the next four years.

Chad and fellow co-ops at Marathon in Garyville

To conclude what I consider my major projects this summer, I have been working on an evaluation of the Alkylation unit based upon a company basic practice concerning Motor Operated Valves (MOV). This basic practice requires MOVs on high risk vessels to be upgraded to Emergency Isolation Valves (EIV) to help eliminate/ prevent major catastrophic incidents within the refinery through methods such as fireproofing, adding actuators to existing valves, and installing entire new valve/actuator system at strategic locations.

Walking away from my first co-op, I realize how much I have learned since the first day I started. I can still remember on my first day going into the Engineering Department meeting and listening to what all the engineers were working on and hearing total random numbers and letters that everyone else seemed to understand besides myself, and thinking "What have I got myself into?" Now I walk into the meeting with enough knowledge and experience that I'm able to understand and give input into the conversation. Throughout this summer I have also gained what I feel is very valuable experience with the company documentation systems Document Librarian, ISS, and R.E.D., which has information on every vessel and instrument in the refinery. I leave my first co-op with a positive outlook of what the future holds for me after I complete all three of my working semesters, and I know that even if I'm not hired by Marathon, I would have no problem finding a job within the oil industry with the experience I've gained from co-oping.