Blast Won’t Have Big Impact on Gas Prices, Analysts Say : Refinery: The Thursday explosion caused significant damage to Texaco’s plant, but it comes when demand is low and other sources are available.

Thursday night’s explosion at Texaco’s Wilmington refinery will likely have a far less spectacular impact on the price of crude oil and gasoline.

While some Southern California Texaco dealers nervously awaited assurance Friday that gasoline supplies would not be interrupted, company officials and independent analysts foresaw no difficulty meeting demand now and later this winter.

Texaco is still assessing what it termed “significant damage” from the blast. Officials estimate that the refinery will be closed for at least three weeks.

One spokesman said the refinery has a 10-day supply of gasoline on hand. The company expects the plant to produce 35,000 barrels of gasoline a day--70% of its pre-explosion output--when much of the refinery reopens at the end of October.

In a California gasoline market that consumes almost 900,000 barrels a day, “we’re not talking about a big deal here, though every little thing has an effect,” said Albert J. Anton Jr., an energy-company analyst and partner at Carl Pforzheimer & Co.

Texaco’s Southern California market share is less than 6%. And Texaco’s refineries across the country have a total production capacity of more than 300,000 barrels a day.

“There are also other sources of product available in the market,” said Maripat Riccardello, a Texaco spokeswoman.

In fact, most analysts had expected a glut of gasoline this winter as clean-air rules take effect Nov. 1. Additives required by the new law will bulk up gasoline from 5% to 10% alone.

Also, with the end of the summer driving season, gasoline prices at the pump have already fallen slightly. Some observers estimated that had the explosion occurred in mid-summer, gasoline prices might have jumped by as much as 5 cents a gallon.

“You don’t have a runaway demand, you don’t have a lack of other suppliers, and there are other options available to the plant operators to produce product,” said Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the Lundberg Letter, which researches energy industry consumer trends.

There could be some impact in the market for heavy crude, however, which the refinery uses as raw material.

The reduced production “has the potential of depressing those prices at least in the short term,” said John Vautrain, manager of the Long Beach office of Purvin & Gertz Inc., which appraises oil refineries. “Texaco is a very important player in heavy crude on the West Coast.”

The combination of strengthened prices for gasoline and lower crude costs would be a boon to all refiners in the region, Vautrain added.

Still, the question remained Friday about how long it will take to repair the damaged refinery units. Several analysts expected that if reconstruction took more than a few months, gasoline supplies could tighten next spring, forcing up prices.

In a declining market Friday, Texaco stock dropped $2 to $60.375, a fall of 3.2%. This was the biggest percentage decline of any major oil stock.

Though spot oil prices rose Friday, most analysts attributed this to Mideast unrest rather than news of the refinery accident. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude oil for delivery in November settled at $22.37 per barrel, up 38 cents on the day. Crude rose 45 cents for the week.