By Kristen Hays and Erwin Seba
HOUSTON, June 11 (Reuters) - Motiva Enterprises said onThursday it aims to trade its own gasoline, diesel and thecomponents needed to make them in a new organization separatefrom its co-owner, Royal Dutch Shell.
Motiva, a 50/50 joint venture of Shell and Saudi Aramco, said in a statement that the move will more closelyconnect the company with fuels markets, customers and tradingpartners.
But Motiva said it will still rely on Shell to trade crudeoil.
"With this change, we hope to provide greater value to themthrough more active participation in the market," Motiva ChiefExecutive Dan Romasko said in the statement.
In an interview with Reuters in March, Romasko said thecompany was "coming into its own" under his tenure, whichstarted in February 2014.
Motiva has moved out of Shell's downtown Houston buildingand into its own office two blocks away, and formed its ownhuman resources department.
And Romasko, a former head of operations for Tesoro Corp who also held logistics, supply and trading positions atConocoPhillips, is leading a new project to combineMotiva's pair of Louisiana refineries into one complex.
Romasko said in the March interview that Motiva stilltransacted its products and crude supply through Shell and thatit was "obviously really deeply intertwined and engaged" withthe co-parent.
"We jointly agreed on the value of Motiva gaining competencein that space so we can better guide the decisions that we needto make, what to buy and sell, that sort of thing," Romasko saidin that interview.
Motiva started negotiating term contracts for its gasolineand diesel products in late 2014.
The company's new trading arm will expand those efforts andassume all products trading for transport fuels and feedstocksused to make them when Motiva's existing refined productstrading agreement with Shell expires late this year.
Romasko arrived at Motiva after it grappled with a $10billion expansion of its 600,250-barrel-per-day Port Arthur,Texas refinery, now the largest in the United States.
It suffered setbacks that included having to basically startover in 2012 when thousands of gallons of caustic chemicalsruined new pipes upon startup.
The mishap took months to fix, further straining relationsbetween Saudi Aramco and Shell. Saudi Aramco previously hadslowed the project to curb costs.
Romasko said in March that the Texas expansion consumed muchof Motiva's attention from 2007 through early 2015, and it nowcould work on the Louisiana project to meet growing dieseldemand while taking advantage of cheap domestic crude to liftreturns for co-owners. (Reporting by Kristen Hays and Erwin Seba; Editing by PaulSimao)