CONVENT – Officials with Motiva Enterprises LLC announced Tuesday they will shut down a crude unit and reformer at its Convent refinery in St. James Parish for five to six weeks for planned maintenance, according to a release.

According to an article from Bloomberg. com, the crude unit, which will be shut down Thursday, has a capacity of 130,000 to 140,000 barrels a day and is the larger of the plant’s two crude units. The plant has a full capacity of 235,000 barrels a day.

A spokesman for the Convent refinery said no one at the facility could comment on operational issues pertaining to the plant or any other issues that could have an impact on business.

Motiva is a refining and marketing joint venture of Saudi Refining Inc., a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, and Shell Oil Co., a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The Convent refinery is one of two refineries the company operates in the River Parishes. The other is a 236,400 barrel-a-day plant in Norco in St. Charles Parish.

According to figures from the Department of Energy, Norco is the 25th-largest U.S. refinery by capacity. Convent ranks in at 26th-largest. Together, they account for about 5.4 percent of the refining capacity on the Gulf Coast.