October 20, 2012:

WOODS CROSS — More than 400 homeowners and businesses filed damage claims following a freak release of 8,400 gallons of oil and oil foam into the sky. Conrad Jenson, engineering manager at the HollyFrontier refinery in Woods Cross, said 405 claims have been made, and all but about 25 have been resolved since the Aug. 30 mishap. The company is in the process of working through the remaining claims. “We realize that this is an imposition on the community and the local residents and we want to make sure we do everything we can to clean it up and return their lives back to normal,” Jenson said Wednesday. Additionally, Jenson said the company had followed up with 150 homeowners and businesses to make sure they have been satisfied with the cleanup. HollyFrontier continues to investigate what went wrong in the oil tank where the release happened, but Jenson said officials currently believe hot oil and water came into contact inside it, and the resulting steam and pressure culminated in thousands of gallons of oil and oil foam being propelled through a roof seam.

The oil-coated structures were in Woods Cross, West Bountiful and Bountiful.  “We need to get back into the tank and inspect it to see if there was anything perhaps that failed inside of there,” Jenson said. “We’re also doing a survey of all the best practices in the industry for hot oil tank operation, design and configuration to see if there is something that’s unique out there about this tank that we can learn and then modify and improve it so that this doesn’t happen again.” West Bountiful leaders were updated on the progress Tuesday at a City Council meeting. “I think we are confident as a city that they are doing everything they can to prevent anything — any accidents,” Councilwoman Debbie McKean said. She said she has received positive feedback from residents about the refinery's actions. “We were just really pleased as a mayor and council with how quickly they responded and how thorough they’ve been,” McKean said. “They go back and check and recheck and make sure everybody’s happy and satisfied with what’s been done.”

HollyFrontier has pumped $500,000 into cleanup efforts so far, Jenson confirmed. It remains unclear what the damage estimate is for the refinery itself.

By KSL.com

October 19, 2012:

It appears a North Dakota American Indian tribe is a step closer to building a crude oil refinery on tribal land. That’s good news for the people of the Fort Berthold Reservation, but let’s not get seduced by the fiction that an in-state refinery will mean lower gasoline or diesel prices at North Dakota service station pumps, as some refinery promoters have been saying. First, the proposed refinery will likely have the capacity to refine, at most, 20,000 barrels of crude a day. That’s a drop in the crude oil market bucket. Second, the prices of refined products like gasoline and diesel (the Fort Berthold plant would produce propane and diesel, with the diesel going into the North Dakota market) are set primarily by national and global commodity markets. It is unlikely the owners and operators of any new refinery would threaten their profitability by discounting their products, especially when they would be buying crude oil at prices set by the market. There is very little convincing evidence that the mere presence of a refinery or two in a state means lower prices at the pump. North Dakota has had a refinery (mostly diesel) at Mandan for years, but the price of fuels at pumps in Mandan and Bismarck is consistently higher than in Fargo, where there is no refinery. Even with the Mandan refinery doing its thing, diesel fuel shortages have been common.

Minnesota’s refineries have not lowered the price of gasoline in that state. In the most recent example, California gasoline prices flirted with $5 a gallon when just one of that state’s many refineries had production problems. Tank car trains of North Dakota’s sweet crude go to refineries in East Coast states every day, and gasoline prices in those places are some of the highest in the nation. Even in that realistic context, new refineries in North Dakota still make sense. They can provide construction jobs and good permanent jobs when up and running. They will have a reliable nearby source of crude for many years, as the Bakken play continues to expand and pump into the foreseeable future. They will make North Dakota oil more valuable because transportation costs from well to refinery will be less. But a break at the pumps for gasoline and diesel? Marginally, maybe, but not significantly. Energy markets are complex and volatile. The prices of oil and refined products are set by the manipulations of jittery speculators, squishy economic forecasts, distant wars and rumors of wars — not by supply and demand. And certainly not by a small refinery on a North Dakota American Indian reservation.

By The Jamestown Sun

October 19, 2012:

Reliance Industries Ltd , owner of the world's biggest refining complex, has imported its first parcel of about 320,000 barrels of Canadian heavy oil this month, sources with knowledge of the development said, becoming the first Indian refiner to do so. Reliance's two advanced refineries in western Gujarat state can together process 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil -- about 28 percent of the country's overall refining capacity. The complexity of these plants allows the refiner to continuously diversify its crude slate by testing new grades and improve refining margins. The company reported a gross refining margin of $9.50 a barrel for the September quarter, up from $7.60 a barrel in the previous quarter, helped by higher demand and unplanned refinery shutdowns in Asia. No comment was available from Reliance. "Canadian heavy oil mostly likely Cold Lake came in a combi cargo with Ecuador's Oriente grade," said one of the sources. He said the price of the Canadian heavy oil bought from PetroChina is linked to Dubai. Reliance processed eight new crudes for the first time in the last fiscal year ending March 31, as it always looks for economical feedstock, the company said in its annual report for 2011/12 which is posted on its website. Weightage of heavy grades from the Latin American region may rise significantly from the current about 30 percent as the private refiner last month signed a deal with Venezuela's PDVSA to buy between 300,000-400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil.

By Reuters

October 19, 2012:

Arsenal Road near Interstate 55 was closed this morning after the release of "petroleum byproducts" at the Exxon-Mobil refinery and is expected to remain closed through the afternoon, officials said. The road was closed from the interstate to Baseline Road near Elwood shortly after 9 a.m., according to the Will County Emergency Management Agency. The leak of an oily mist has been stopped at the refinery, 25915 S. Frontage Road near Channahon, according to a news release from the Will County Sheriff's office. The road is expected to remain closed for the rest of the business day, the Sheriff's office said in a release about 12:15 p.m. The release of the "oily product" made roads in the area, all the way to Illinois 53 near Elburn, slick, the sheriff's office said. Illinois State Police, Sheriff's police and local departments were at the scene dealing with the situation. The substance released poses no health hazard but required that the Highway Department to sand the road.

By Chicago Tribune

October 19, 2012:

Royal Dutch Shell Plc. (RDSA) experienced emissions on Wednesday at the gasoline production unit and several other pieces of equipment at its refinery in Deer Park, Texas, according to a filing with state regulators made public late Thursday. The emissions occurred because of "maintenance, start-up or shut-down activity" at the catalytic cracking unit, hydrotreater, alkylation unit and central processing unit, Shell said in its filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The emissions lasted for nearly 12 hours, according to the filing. A Shell spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

By Dow Jones Newswires