Exxon Mobil Corp said on Wednesday that it cut production rates at the second-largest refinery in the United States as crude deliveries were held up by wreckage that partially closed the Houston Ship Channel for a third day. Exxon said it was working with the U.S. Coast Guard and the Port of Houston to resume crude shipments as soon as possible to its 560,500 barrels per day (bpd) refinery in Baytown, Texas, which sits along the country’s busiest petrochemicals waterway. Royal Dutch Shell Plc also said it was evaluating the closure’s impact on its 327,000 bpd joint-venture refinery in Deer Park, Texas, and LyondellBasell said its 263,776 bpd plant in Houston had experienced no operational impacts. The Coast Guard said crews launched a plan on Wednesday to contain flammable vapors emanating from a damaged tanker so it could be safely moved, which would allow the channel to reopen. On Monday, the double-hulled Carla Maersk tanker carrying 216,000 barrels of gasoline additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, collided with a bulk carrier hauling steel near Morgan’s Point, just south of Baytown, prompting the closure. The bulk carrier was moved on Tuesday. J.J. Plunkett, port agent for the Houston Pilots, said 43 inbound and 33 outbound vessels were waiting to move on Wednesday, up from 36 inbound and 28 outbound on Tuesday. Those include all kinds of ships. Enterprise Products Partners suspended docking operations for ships and barges at its Oiltanking Partners unit on the ship channel, applying force majeure retroactively to the shutdown on Monday, according to a Bloomberg story seen by traders. One of two tankers carrying Mexican crude that had been waiting outside of Houston since fog held up deliveries for four days last week had started moving east to Nederland on Wednesday, according to ClipperData, which tracks crude movements. Sunoco Logistics Partners has a huge storage complex in Nederland. Traffic in and out of Galveston, Texas City and Bayport on the south end of the waterway has been operating as usual. An unknown amount of MTBE spilled upon impact. The Coast Guard said on Wednesday that crews would contain vapors with dense foam so the liquid cargo could be removed, allowing for safe movement of the tanker. Plunkett said the hope was to get traffic moving by daybreak on Thursday.