BP Looks To Restart The Midwest’s Largest Refinery

BP is still in the process of assessing when a restart of the affected units of its Whiting refinery can take place, BP told Oilprice.com on Friday.

BP continues to work “with local and state agencies as we continue to monitor the impact” of the electrical fire, which saw no one injured.

BP said it was “continuing to assess when a restart of the affected units can take place,” but did not elaborate on how much finished product had been affected. It also provided no date for restart.

The Whiting refinery—the largest refinery in the Midwest—is capable of processing 440,000 barrels per day of crude oil. 

The refinery is located in PADD 2—a region that is running at 95.4% of capacity as of August 19, according to the latest weekly EIA data. This is the highest capacity utilization in almost a year, contributing 3.997 million barrels of crude oil per day.

The Whiting refinery can produce 10 million gallons (~277,000 barrels) of gasoline, 4 million gallons of diesel, and 2 million gallons of jet fuel each day; it is capable of producing enough gasoline every day to support the daily travel of 7 million cars, the refinery factsheet claims. 

Gasoline prices in the United States have been on a downward trend for months, but a significant refinery outage, such as BP’s Whiting refinery, has the power to pressure gasoline prices higher. The national average price for a gallon of gasoline was $3.869, according to AAA data. Indiana’s average was below that at $3.841 per gallon.

Two weeks ago, BP said it had reached a deal to exit its stake in the BP-Husky Toledo Refinery (160,000 bpd), leaving it to focus on its Whiting and Cherry Point refineries in the United States.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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