June 1, 2012:

Midwest gasoline rose after Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) rescheduled planned maintenance at the Robinson refinery in Illinois, moving it to this month from July. The crude unit at the plant will shut for about three weeks starting around June 9, said a person with knowledge of the situation. The plant can process 215,000 barrels of crude a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The discount for conventional, 87-octane gasoline in the Midwest, or Group 3, narrowed 10.12 cents to 0.38 cent versus futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 2:39 p.m., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s the highest level since Nov. 9. Prompt delivery fell 6.95 cents to $2.6505 a gallon.

Tesoro Corp. (TSO) will cut processing rates by more than half at the Mandan refinery in North Dakota on about June 11 for planned work that will increase the plant’s capacity, a person with knowledge of the schedule said. Conventional gasoline in Chicago rose 6 cents to a premium of 11 cents versus futures. BP Plc (BP) shut the smallest of three crude units at the Whiting refinery in Indiana for unplanned maintenance because of a malfunction, a person familiar with the situation said.

By Bloomberg

June 1, 2012:

Improved technology and higher oil prices for the first time are making it economically feasible for oil refineries to tap more of Utah’s large reserves of crude oil as thick as boot polish, potentially bringing jobs and millions in revenue to the state. Upgrades proposed or under way at three of the state’s five refineries will enable them to process three times the amount of the paraffinic-based crude, commonly called black or yellow wax petroleum, as they could six years ago. But development will come at a cost.

Boosting production capacity could also increase certain environmental risks, based on refinery safety records over the past decades. Hundreds more oil tankers are expected to travel the 170 miles from the rich oil fields in eastern Utah to the refinery row that straddles the Salt Lake and Davis county lines, negatively impacting air quality, neighborhoods and traffic. HollyFrontier points out not all the implications for air quality are bad. Company officials say they expect to reduce the refinery’s normal emissions by 10 percent to 12 percent because Utah’s waxy crudes are especially low in sulfur. Only time will reveal how the pluses and minuses balance out.

Increasing capacity » Within the next two years, HollyFrontier plans to process 20,000 barrels a day of Utah wax crude at its Woods Cross refinery and a total of 40,000 barrels daily after 2016, up from its current capacity of 10,000 barrels a day. Tesoro, the state’s largest refinery, and the first to submit a proposal to the state Division of Air Quality, DAQ, plans to process nearly 20,000 barrels of Utah crude a day within the next two years, doubling its current capacity.

Chevron is upgrading its Salt Lake City facility to take more Utah crude, but it won’t say by how much. And although Silver Eagle and Big West aren’t expanding, the latter refinery in North Salt Lake has the capacity to process upward of 11,500 barrels of black wax per day. Silver Eagle’s Woods Cross plant now refines yellow wax exclusively. Black and yellow wax petroleum are refined into products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, lubricating oil, paraffin and asphalt. Together, they made up 77 percent of the state’s oil production last year, with nonwaxy crudes from San Juan and Sevier counties contributing most of the remaining amount.

Utah’s waxy petroleum is cheaperper barrel than the so-called sweeter crudes, which can be shipped via pipelines. Unlike sweeter oils, Utah crude is so thick it solidifies unless kept warm. Most of the crude is trucked to Utah’s refinery row in insulated tankers, which must reach their destination within a few hours, making Salt Lake the only place in the region it can be processed. Despite its transportation challenges, Utah crude offers refineries several advantages, said Alan Walker of the University of Utah’s Energy and Geoscience Institute. Its low sulfur content aids in refining for lower emissions. And in the Uinta Basin, it lies just 3,000 to 4,000 feet underground, making drilling comparatively cheap.

"It’s an extremely valuable resource," Walker said. "The public has this perception that it’s bad crude oil, and nothing could be further from the truth." With the refineries proposing to pump out millions more barrels of waxy crude, one might expect they’d be belching that much more pollution. But it turns out the opposite is true, based on what the plants are projecting. ‘An exciting time’ » Holly, which submitted its waxy crudes plans to the DAQ last month, projected a decrease in overall pollution by 239 tons per year thanks to the low-sulfur input and additional pollution controls. The company projects sulfur dioxide will be reduced by nearly 400 tons per year. In addition, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, key factors in Utah’s pollution-forming emissions, are expected to decline by 45 tons per year and 21 tons per year, respectively. Holly said it expects just two pollutants to increase, carbon monoxide and Hazardous air pollutants.

By The Slat Lake Tribune

May 31, 2012:

Fuel prices are set to rise after it was announced yesterday that a refinery providing 20 per cent of the South East’s petrol is to be closed down, leading to the loss of up to 1,000 jobs. The AA fears the closure of the Coryton refinery, in Essex, will lead to City speculators pushing up the wholesale price of refined fuels – meaning higher prices at the pumps. The refinery was put into administration by its Swiss owner Petroplus in January, raising fears of fuel shortage after it halted all sales.

Administrator Price Waterhouse Cooper started the plant up again in February, but has now pulled the plug on it after failing to find a buyer in the four months since it went bust.

AA spokesman Luke Bosdet said: ‘Our concern is speculators will now seize on this latest news to drive up the price at the pumps because there will be a perceived reduction in supply following the Coryton closure.’  T he AA and MPs have warned that millions of motorists are already being ripped off by up to 4p per litre at the pumps because of profiteering by speculators and oil giants. Wholesale prices of fuel have fallen by up to 10p a litre over the past fortnight, but motorists have benefited by only around 6p per litre. Petrol is currently selling at 136.03p per litre, and diesel 141.85p.

Petrol reached its record high of 142.48p on April 16 while diesel hit its record 147.93p on April 12, driving sales down.  Last night Edmund King, AA president, called for an inquiry into the state of the UK’s fuel market and prices.  He said: ‘If the loss of Coryton drives up the cost of fuel in the coming days, the need to find out who is responsible for destroying demand through record prices becomes vital.’ Administrators PwC said the Coryton site would be wound down over the next three months after the challenge of raising the £625million needed to fund the refinery had proven too much.

Since PwC reopened the site in February, around 20million barrels of oil have been refined there. A statement read: ‘Despite this extensive exercise over the past four months it has not yet been possible to find a solution which sees the refinery continues as a going concern.’ It said there were likely to be ‘substantial’ redundancies among the 500-strong workforce, while up to 500 contractors will learn their fate in the next few days.

By Dailymail.co.uk

May 31, 2012:

EDWARDSVILLE - Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan claims in a lawsuit that Shell Oil Co. and others have polluted and continue to pollute the area around Roxana's oil refinery. The suit filed Tuesday in Madison County Circuit Court asks the courts to declare the refiners liable for the cost of removing oil and other chemicals from the water after leaks and spills of petroleum over several years. The companies could be liable for at least $50,000 in penalties on each of two counts and $10,000 per day for each additional day the operators fail to comply. A third count demands certain cleanup efforts.

The attorney general joins a list of attorneys who have filed lawsuits in connection with operations at the refinery, formerly owned by Shell Oil Co. The personal injury suits concern alleged benzene contamination, which the plaintiffs claim has caused cancer in people who lived or worked near the plant. A pending class action lawsuit seeks to force the defendants to pay for the cost of removing contaminants from the area's groundwater. As in the personal injury and class action cases, the attorney general's case claims that pollutants are floating on the water table beneath Roxana and have migrated beyond the boundaries of the plant.

Madigan's suit claims some of the pumps used in the plant's operation are making the pollution worse. "These companies must be held accountable for the environmental and public health damage caused by this contamination," Madigan said. "This lawsuit seeks a complete assessment and a plan to restore the quality of the groundwater and subsurface to pre-contamination conditions and to protect the people living in Roxana." Along with the $50,000 penalty on each of two counts, the suit also seeks to recover the costs incurred by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in the investigation and cleanup.

Shell and current operators ConocoPhillips are two of the defendants named in Madigan's suit. ConocoPhillips is operating the plant on behalf of WRB Refining, the suit states. WRB Refining spokeswoman Melissa Erker said her company maintains that it always has acted responsibly in operations of the refinery and believes, as it has said before, that it is named in the legal action only because of its historical connection with the Shell property. "We believe the current refinery ownership is named in the lawsuit because of the direct (successor) relationship with Shell, which is responsible for the historic aspects and for maintaining the remediation and corrective action plan now in place," Erker said.

The remediation action began last year on the refinery property and in surrounding neighborhoods. A Shell spokeswoman said officials at her firm are aware of the suit but are limiting their comments for now. "We are aware that the state of Illinois has filed a lawsuit against Shell and other parties regarding alleged violations of the Illinois Environmental Protection Act associated with the Wood River Refinery, near Roxana, Illinois. Shell will review the suit and respond in due course," spokeswoman Kayla Macke said. She said Shell was declining comment about the merits of the suit. "However, Shell has been working cooperatively with the Illinois EPA, Illinois Department of Public Health and the village of Roxana to conduct environmental assessments and address historic subsurface impacts," Macke said.

"We are seeking to complete the work quickly, thoroughly and with minimal disruption to homeowners. For example, we recently installed a substantial soil vapor extraction system along the east side of Roxana and near the Village Public Works Yard that draws in and eliminates soil vapors. "Our primary concern is for the safety and well-being of the Roxana community," she said. "Shell remains committed to carrying out its work under the direction of state regulatory agencies, including the IEPA, and will continue to maintain open communications with regulatory agencies and homeowners." The suit claims that over time, including a 1986 benzene release, the refiners have caused or allowed pollutants, including oil and chemicals, to enter the groundwater.

Listed among the chemicals is benzene, a known carcinogen. That chemical allegedly is responsible for the cases of cancer that the personal injury plaintiffs claim. The suit filed by Madigan lists the upper limits for the allowed amount of benzene and other chemicals and alleges the refiners violated state statute by exceeding those limits. The suit claims that activities of the refiners, including the choice of wells used for pumping groundwater for production uses, have caused or allowed further migration of contaminants.

Among the remedies sought, in addition to damages and costs, is to direct the groundwater flow back toward the interior of the facility. The suit asks the court to force the refiners to treat the groundwater withdrawn from the aquifer and to remove the hydrocarbons.

By The Telegraph

May 31, 2012:

BP PLC (BP) said flaring at its Cherry Point oil refinery in Blaine, Washington, was caused by a compressor unit upset at the plant's hydrocracker unit, according to a filing to the National Response Center. The Wednesday afternoon upset caused a release of sulfur dioxide to be routed to the refinery's safety flare stack; the report said the compressor was inoperable. It is not clear whether the compressor outage had, or is having, an impact on operations at the refinery because compressors are often redundant.

The Cherry Point refinery recently resumed production after months of maintenance work following a fire at the plant's crude unit Feb. 17. The refinery's throughput capacity is rated at 225,000 barrels a day. A BP representative wasn't immediately available to comment and typically doesn't comment on day-to-day refining operations.

By Dow Jones Newswires