Little Effect Expected From Refinery Blast

As authorities continued to investigate the cause and resulting damage of Monday’s powerful explosion at Texaco’s Wilmington refinery, a company official and oil industry experts said Tuesday that the incident should not severely disrupt the refinery’s production or affect gasoline prices.

A day after the early morning blast rocked homes and businesses within several miles of the facility, officials with Texaco and the Los Angeles City Fire Department said they had not determined what caused one of four hydrotreating units at the refinery to explode, sending a black cloud billowing thousands of feet into the sky.

“Right now, it is still under investigation . . . [and] there’s no way to tell how long that will take,” Fire Department spokesman Bob Collis said. “This is a complicated piece of machinery.”

While fire investigators and Texaco’s experts descended upon the facility, company spokeswoman Barbara Kornylo said no one was allowed to make a close inspection of the damaged hydrotreater until late Tuesday. And even then, she said, Texaco’s investigators were expected to make only a preliminary survey of the damage to the three-story unit, which is about half the length and width of a football field.

“Until we get in and . . . really begin to investigate the damage,” Kornylo said, “we will not be able to say what happened or what it will take to repair it.”

To date, she added, officials had not ruled out any possibilities about what caused the blast but were “pretty comfortable” in saying it was not the result of arson.

Four years ago, a corroded pipeline at the refinery was blamed for a blast that injured 16 workers and forced the evacuation of 500 neighbors. No one was injured in Monday’s blast.

Kornylo said the blast will not affect the refinery’s output because the damage was contained to only one of four hydrotreating units.

Industry sources said Texaco refineries in Bakersfield and the San Francisco Bay area would make up for any loss in gasoline production.

The Wilmington refinery can process up to 98,000 barrels of crude oil a day and refines an estimated 6% of the 1 million barrels of gasoline used each day in California. A complete shutdown would have significantly affected gasoline prices over time because of cutbacks in the state’s overall refining capacity caused partly by clean air requirements and poor profits in recent years.

Market uncertainty about the extent of the refinery’s damage sent wholesale spot prices of gasoline up as much as 3 cents per gallon Monday.

But on Tuesday, the market seemed to discount the explosion’s impact on gasoline supplies. Retail prices remained stable at Texaco stations in the Los Angeles Basin and wholesale prices of West Coast gasoline gave back some of yesterday’s gains, closing down about half a cent at 64.75 cents a gallon, according to Oil Price Information Service of Lakewood, N.J.

“You are in an oversupply situation out there and the [refinery] unit involved will not impact gasoline immediately. They can still produce gasoline so the effect is short-lived at this point,” said Scott Berhang, the service’s executive editor.

In the meantime, tests done by the South Coast Air Quality Management District after the fire found that air around the refinery contained some hydrocarbons that exceeded normal levels, AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood said.

One of the substances was benzene, a carcinogen found in crude oil, as well as toluene and xylene, which are possible carcinogens. The long-term risk of brief exposure to the toxic gases is unknown, but the concentrations were not considered immediately dangerous.

Although the fire resulting from the explosion sent up a tower of smoke that could be seen for miles, there was no strong wind and no inversion layer to trap pollutants near the ground, so the smoke soared straight up.

“Basically, they got lucky,” Atwood said.

But those who live or work near the refinery were not calling themselves lucky.

At All Auto Glass & Upholstery, owner Jose Chavez surveyed a shop where pieces of dust and metal had rained down after the explosion. The damage did not compare to that from the 1992 blast, when his entire glass inventory was smashed. But it was a grim reminder.

“It still makes you worry about where you work,” Chavez said.

Times staff writer Marla Cone and correspondent Deborah Belgum contributed to this story.