7 Workers Injured in Fire at Refinery

A fire and explosion at Chevron’s huge refinery across the bay in Richmond on Monday sent seven plant workers to hospitals and threatened minor disruptions of gasoline and jet fuel supplies in Northern California.

The fire, which began with an explosion in the refinery’s hydrogen cracking unit, burned out of control for more than four hours before it was declared contained at 5 p.m.

Throughout the afternoon, more that 40 Chevron employees and Richmond firefighters battled the blaze, which was being fed by gasoline and hydrogen. Two Chevron firefighters were treated at hospitals for heat exhaustion and were released. Five other plant workers remained hospitalized and were being treated for burns and shock.

Chevron spokesman Mark Rosenberg said the explosion and fire “severely affects our ability to make gasoline at the refinery.” After Chevron’s El Segundo facility, it is the largest oil refinery on the West Coast. There are five other refineries in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The explosion and fire knocked out about one-fifth of the plant’s daily production of 100,000 barrels of gasoline and half of its production of 40,000 barrels of jet fuel, a Chevron spokeswoman added.

The production curtailments represent about 2% of all West Coast gasoline production and about 6% of West Coast jet fuel production, estimated James McDonald, an independent oil industry consultant in Los Angeles.

But McDonald said gasoline and jet fuel inventories are now “quite high” on the Gulf Coast and that supplies could be shipped to California relatively quickly to alleviate any shortages.

Still, he said that Monday’s explosion and fire “could slow down the drop in gasoline prices that many of us have been anticipating.” Gasoline prices shot up last month after the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on March 24 and spilled millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska.

Witnesses at the site of the fire said a plume of black smoke billowed straight up into the air. Claude Van Marter, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County office of emergency services, said that prevailing winds were not strong enough to blow the smoke into populated areas.