Chevron No Longer Seeking Buyer for Northeast Refinery

Chevron is no longer looking for a buyer for its refinery in Philadelphia but may sell some low-producing oil wells in the Southwest, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based oil company said Friday.

The company tried to sell its 176,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Philadelphia along with a network of 4,000 gas stations earlier this year. Last month, it found a buyer for the gas stations in Cumberland Farms, a Canton, Mass.-based convenience store operator, but it didn’t receive an acceptable offer for the refinery.

A Chevron spokesman said the refinery is operating profitably for the first time in three years, and the company is content to hold onto it for now.

“Of course, if someone comes in with an offer for it, we’re willing to listen,” he said.

Chevron is still in the process of evaluating its four refineries east of the Mississippi, he added. One of the four, in Perth Amboy, N.J., has been closed for some time.

The company said it may sell the low-producing oil wells in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas as part of its program to reduce the debt that it took on to buy Gulf Oil last year.

It has already sold about $4 billion in assets and has reduced its debt to about $10 billion from $15.5 billion at the beginning of this year.