Chevron Canada says its Burnaby refinery lost power during the August 29 windstorm, but doesn’t believe it will harm regional fuel supply.
Spokesman Adrien Byrne said August 31 that the refinery shut down in an orderly fashion when it lost power from BC Hydro and would be back to full operations in a few days.
“We’re on track to progressively start up the units in a safe and controlled manner in the next few days, and we don’t anticipate any impact on market demand,” Byrne told Business in Vancouver. “We’re waiting for the weather to clear up at the moment.”
The Chevron refinery is supplied by the Kinder Morgan pipeline, rail and truck. Its website says it refines up to 57,000 barrels a day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other products.
Byrne added that he doesn’t anticipate that the temporary outage will affect Metro Vancouver’s retail gasoline prices because “we have a strong supply position for our products at this moment regardless of the refinery being shut down.”
Refinery shutdowns can cause price hikes.
On August 8, BP’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery — the largest in the Midwest — had an unplanned outage because of a leak. Wholesale prices jumped by US$0.60 a gallon in Chicago. That refinery has a capacity of 413,000 barrels a day.
