No. of Recommendations: 4
It doesn't help when the largest refinery in the midwest shuts down due to a power failure.
BP operates a refinery in Whiting, Indiana that can process about 435,000 barrels per day. On February 1, some sort of electrical issue triggered a shutdown of the entire plant and production has remained down since.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bp-whiting...It appears two transformers at the plant failed, triggering a cascading shutdown. Since the shutdown was not planned / controlled, BP estimates it will take at least three weeks to review the status of the entire plant and determine if any euipment was damaged. If issues are found, it will obviously take MORE than three weeks to resume production. Given that NO oil company has BUILT a new refinery since the 1970s, it seems unlikely that TWO transformers would fail in a way that would be "graceful" and not require their replacement. It seems LESS likely that the type of transformer required for power at a giant refinery would be something sitting around in inventory somewhere, able to be swapped out for new in a week or two.
While curtailing SUPPLY of gas in the short term, spiking retail prices, the shutdown is also reducing DEMAND for crude from pipelines, especially giant tanker farms in Cushing, OK triggering different dynamics in those markets.
WTH
