And empower City tonight, it's the biggest refinery expansion project in the past ten years, and it's right here in Beaumont. Exxonmobil's refinery is expanding, and that's going to mean more jobs, but also potentially lower prices at the pump. And we're talking about Exxon Beaumont light atmospheric distillation expansion. And if that's a mouthful, you can just say blade, our 12 news reporter Simona Barco was at the first reporter to get a walkthrough of the refinery today, giving us a very rare. Lance inside this massive facility, Simona? That's right, Leticia. I visited the ExxonMobil refinery along Allen Rd, just off of MLK Parkway earlier today, geared up in a hard hat and coveralls for a behind the scenes tour of the new addition to the refinery. Here's what we learned. Supply and demand. We learn about it in grade school, but when this principal becomes practical, it can hurt your pocketbook. We all see the high fuel prices at the pump. High fuel prices are a factor of increasing demand, which we've seen since the pandemic, and very tight supply. This expansion will increase the Beaumont ExxonMobil facilities refining capacity by more than 65% or 250,000 barrels per day. This is the largest US refining expansion in. Almost a decade and it makes us incredibly proud that it's right here in Southeast Texas. Each refinery has three operations, separation technology, reforming or cracking technology and treatment facilities. This one is on the back end. Here is the treating facilities and then further back there is our separation technology, the distillation towers. But once the diesel gets through the refinery that's where a greater supply can affect everyday prices going to the grocery store, 18 Wheelers, those deliveries that you're getting of your. Amazon, those all run on diesel. And so it's very important that as we're supplying this diesel in the marketplace that we're part of the solution and that we're helping with the supply imbalance. Along the way, this project also provides more local jobs. Right now the project is in its peak construction phase, hiring nearly 1600 workers. Once it opens up in 2023, it will provide 40 to 60 new permanent jobs. It's pretty exciting because it's happening right here in Beaumont, TX and. Our workforce couldn't be more proud to be a part of the solution. The groundbreaking for the expansion took place in 2019, working through the pandemic, so from the start to finish is it's expected to take four years to complete Simona Barkham 12 news.