August 2, 2012:

Blaze broke out early Thursday after an explosion at an Oklahoma oil refinery, authorities told NBC News. A Tulsa Police Department spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that it was notified about the fire at the HollyFrontier refinery in west Tulsa at 2:21 a.m. local time (3:21 a.m. ET).  The refinery has its own fire department, which was battling the blaze, and local authorities were on standby in case they were needed, the spokesperson said. The fire appeared under control and was being allowed to burn out, according to NBC station KJRH-Tulsa. The explosion and subsequent blaze caused one smokestack to collapse, according to a report on local radio station KRMG. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.   The local and corporate offices of the Dallas-based HollyFrontier Corp. could not immediately be reached. An employee who answered the telephone at the Tulsa refinery declined to comment.

The flames reached several stories into the air immediately following the explosion but had since died down, according to a KJRH reporter on the scene. The glow from the fire could be seen from several miles away, KJRH reported. No injuries have been reported. KRMG reported reported that local residents stood outside their homes and watched the flames rise into the air. A witness named only as Cody told KRMG that he and his mother were "freaking out" over the blaze.

'Not ideal' weather conditions

Weather conditions for fighting the blaze were "not ideal," according to AccuWeather, which reported temperatures of about 94 degrees with wind gusts up to 21 miles per hour. HollyFrontier says its Tulsa refinery has a crude oil capacity of 125,000 barrels a day. HollyFrontier describes itself as "an independent petroleum refiner and marketer that produces high value light products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other specialty products." HollyFrontier says it markets its products principally in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest and Plains states. The company was established by a merger of Holly Corp. and Frontier Oil in 2011. Holly Corp. was ranked number 431 in Fortune magazine's 2010 list of the largest U.S. companies.

At the time of their merger, the Holly and Frontier companies totaled 440,000 barrels a day of refining capacity in their five refineries, according to The Wall Street Journal. That represented a relatively small portion of the total American refining capacity, which stood at about 17.6 million barrels a day, according to the newspaper.

By NBC News

August 2, 2012:

TULSA, Okla. — Officials say crews have contained a large fire at a Tulsa oil refinery that caused a loud explosion overnight and that could be seen from miles away. Refinery owner HollyFrontier Corp. says all workers are accounted for and no one was injured in the early Thursday blaze. Neighbors told local news outlets they were woken by a loud explosion before 3 a.m.   The company says the fire started in the diesel hydrotreater unit at its Tulsa East refinery. It says its emergency response team contained the fire and that the community isn’t at risk.

HollyFrontier is based in Dallas and operates four other refineries in Kansas, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. It says on its website that the Tulsa refinery has a daily crude oil capacity of 125,000 barrels. Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

By The Washington Post

August 2, 2012:

Group Three and Gulf Coast ultra-low-sulfur diesel differentials rose on Thursday on news of a diesel hydrotreater fire at HollyFrontier Corp's 115,300-barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, traders said. Group Three differentials climbed 2.50 cents per gallon to 23.00 cents over September heating oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange, traders said. Gulf Coast ULSD gained 1.50 cents per gallon to 9.25 cents over September futures on expectations that more supply would be routed to the Group Three market, traders said.

By Reuters

August 2, 2012:

U.S. oil refiner Western Refining Inc posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit helped by lower operating costs and higher output. Total refinery output rose 3 percent to 157,960 barrels per day (bpd) for the first quarter. Output at its refinery in El Paso, Texas rose 1 percent to 132,157 bpd. Earnings rose to $238.5 million, or $2.19 per share, for April-June from $101.1 million, or 94 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, Western Refining earned $1.89 per share. Sales fell 4 percent to $2.47 billion. Analysts on average had expected the company to earn $1.68 per share on revenue of $2.19 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Operating costs fell 14 percent to $1.78 billion, the El Paso-based company said. Western Refining shares closed at $23.26 on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

By Reuters

August 2, 2012:

State oil giant Saudi Aramco has extended the deadline to bid for construction of a new refinery in Jizan by one month, industry sources said. The refinery in Jizan, an underdeveloped province bordering the kingdom's southern neighbour Yemen will have a capacity of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd). Far from Saudi's oilfields on the Gulf coast, the refinery is part of a crucial plan by Aramco, increasingly looking to expand its downstream activities, to raise its domestic refining output to 3.5 million bpd by 2016. Bidding is now due to close in mid-September after some contractors asked for an extension to prepare their engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages, industry sources said.

Separately, bids for expansion of an oil lubricants refinery in Yanbu, the Saudi Aramco Lubricating Oil Refining Co (Luberef), are due to be submitted on September 1. Luberef is 70 percent owned by Saudi Aramco while Saudi Jadwa Industrial Investment owns the remaining 30 percent in Luberef, after U.S. oil firm ExxonMobil sold its stake. Luberef, established in 1976, produces around 550,000 tonnes per year of oil lubricants at its two refineries on the kingdom's Red Sea coast at Jeddah and Yanbu. As a result of the expansion in the Yanbu refinery, which now has a capacity of 280,000 tpy of oil lubricants, a type of base oil that is new to the Gulf region will be produced.

U.S. Jacobs Engineering conducted front-end engineering and design (FEED) for the expansion of the refinery, whose capacity will double once the project is completed in 2015. An executive at Luberef told Reuters in 2010 the cost of the project is expected to be around $1 billion.

By Reuters