Sources: Olmeca is still offline, but Mexico's Minatitlan has been brought back to life.

Sources told Thursday that Mexico's Minatitlan refinery, which produces 285,000 barrels per day, was restarting Thursday. The 340,000 bpd Olmeca was still not running.

Sources said that heavy rains caused the power to go out at both Minatitlan, in Veracruz - one of Mexico's older refineries - and Olmeca, in Tabasco - the country's newest refinery.

One source said that Minatitlan would be back online by Thursday.

Sources say that the Olmeca refinery (also known as Dos Bocas) is expected to try to restart on Thursday. The source noted that the restart attempt will depend on the results of the damage assessment carried out by the crews at the site.

Sources requested anonymity in order to discuss confidential data. Pemex (the state-owned energy company of Mexico) did not reply to a comment request.

IIR Energy, a monitor of the industry, confirmed that heavy rains directly affected a compressor at Olmeca's 94,000 bpd unit for gasoline production.

The market participants believe that a prolonged shutdown at the plant would leave Mexico without its immediate gasoline needs, increasing the demand for cargos coming from the United States. This is the largest fuel supplier to Mexico.

Mexico has struggled for years to run its aging refineries efficiently. The plants are often shut down due to the difficulty of processing the heavy crudes that Pemex pumps.

According to the latest official data, Olmeca produced more than 57,000 bpd gasoline and approximately 77,000 bpd diesel in July. Shariq Khan, reporting from New York and Diane Craft, editing.

(source: Reuters)