The biggest refinery in the Midwest, BP’s Whiting facility, had multiple units offline on Friday, market sources told Reuters, quoting data from energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
The refinery was also actively flaring early on Friday, according to one of Reuters’ sources.
The Whiting, Indiana refinery “experienced a fire that was put out and was actively flaring with alarms heard in vicinity last night,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said on Friday.
The still unknown issue at Whiting occurs two months after the massive 440,000-barrel-per-day refinery was forced into flaring in the middle of August following severe thunderstorms that dumped heavy rain across northwest Indiana, flooding the site and surrounding neighborhoods.
The refinery returned to normal operations about a week later, at the end of August.
The Whiting refinery, perched on the southern edge of Lake Michigan just outside Chicago, is critical to regional fuel supply, producing gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel for much of the Midwest. Any disruption at Whiting, which is BP’s biggest refinery anywhere in the world, typically ripples quickly into regional fuel markets, where inventories are already leaner than normal this summer.
The disruption this time happens after a large fire at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery in California in early October forced units offline and threatens regional supply in the West.
Commenting on the El Segundo refinery incident, GasBuddy’s De Haan said at the time that “While OPEC again agreed over the weekend to boost oil production for November, the real story for motorists has been regional variation — especially in areas served by California’s supply system.”
“Though the damage from the fire appears limited, the West Coast is likely to see prices climb, while most other areas can expect relative stability or slight declines,” De Haan wrote on X.
The national average gasoline price is nearing the below $3 per gallon mark as the U.S. benchmark oil price, WTI Crude, fell below $60 per barrel last week, De Haan said early this week.
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
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