The central crude oil refining
unit at Chevron Corp’s Richmond, California petroleum refinery, which has been out
of operation since a fire broke out at the facility Aug. 6, will remain closed through
the rest of the year, the company announced Oct. 9.
Before the fire, the 2,900-acre
facility, which is in the San Francisco Bay area, was processing about 242,000 barrels
of crude oil daily, with the end products primarily being diesel and jet fuels,
as well as gasoline. But since the blaze, production of motor fuel at the facility
has been cut by more than 50 percent.
The Richmond refinery is
one of 21 refineries in California, but the 242,000 barrels of daily crude it was
processing accounted for 12 percent of the state’s 2.09 million barrels per day
of net capacity.
A refining unit performs
the initial filtering of crude oil coming into a refinery and produces raw materials
for all other units. The blaze is believed to have occurred after a diesel leak
near a pump at the distillation unit. A combustible hydrocarbon liquid known as
“gas-oil” leaked from an eight-inch pipe connected to a crude oil distillation tower
in the refinery’s crude unit, according to the federal Chemical Safety Board, which
investigated the incident.
Workers were reportedly
in the process of repairing piping connected to the still-operating distillation
tower, according to the CSB, when the leak intensified. Due to the high temperature
of the material in the tower, in excess of 600 degrees Fahrenheit, the gas-oil immediately
formed a large flammable vapor cloud.
Oil and gas prices in California
spiked in the fire’s aftermath, with the Oil Price Information Service reporting
that retail gas prices had gone up as much as 50 cents per gallon in the days following
the fire. California has taken various steps to meet demand, including increasing
product imports from Asia and elsewhere.
In an interim quarterly
update to investors, Chevron revealed that during the first two months of the third
quarter, US refinery crude-input volumes decreased by 92,000 barrels per day compared
to the second quarter, largely due to the shutdown of the Richmond refinery crude
unit.
