The Marathon Petroleum Co. plans to idle its refinery in unincorporated Contra Costa County north of Concord and east of Martinez, according to two financial news websites.
The shutdown, according to stories published late Friday by Seeking Alpha, a New York-based crowd-sourced content service for financial markets, and San Francisco-based Argus Media, will take effect April 27.
The shutdown is being spurred by a significant drop in demand for gasoline and other fuels in light of COVID-19 coronavirus-driven travel restrictions.
The refinery employs approximately 740 people, Marathon says, and can process 161,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The refinery produces gasoline, diesel fuel, distillates, petroleum coke, propane, heavy fuel oil and refinery-grade propylene.
Full-time refinery employees will be kept on, and the refinery will resume production when market conditions improve, according to the reports.
Marathon shut down a smaller refinery in Gallup, N.M. earlier this week for the same reasons.
A representative from the Contra Costa County refinery did not immediately return a call or an email for comment.
24 comments
Petroleum Coke tastes terrible, but I still prefer it to Pepsi
Yeah, the petroleum stuff burns my nose.
Good time to do some maintenance and upgrades.
Upgrades will not do, a complete rebuild is in order.
As a petrochemical contractor I worked in every refinery in the Bay Area. I can say without any hesitation that this one is the most rundown, dangerous and neglected facility. Years of multiple owners and deferred maintenance have created a very hazardous place. It’s nothing like Chevron, PBF or Valero which are much better and much safer places.
The bigger hit is the sub-contractors that regularly work within the refinery. The 740 +/- full-time employees are just a small percent of the work going on there.
Hopefully they will take this opportunity to perform some maintenance and upgrades while the refinery is shut down.
OPEN THE ECONOMY!!
@KenInConcord.
LMFAO The “Economy” is open- it’s called the Trump Recession. Enjoying the ride? Cheers!
@KeninConcord Part 2
As of 12:15 AM PDT Monday 4/20/20 Disney Corporation (which owns the glorious Pixar of Emeryville, CA) announced it is laying off 100,000 employees today at 9:00AM PDT across the USA. Looks like the Trump Recession continues….there is no “Opening the Economy” with political spin, that is going to help those families. Cheers!
How do you have a Shut Down with Social Distancing. Chevron is putting off their big one till next year.
NORCON should be blaming the Chinese for unleashing COVID-19 upon the planet.
NORCO, this is actually the liberal socialist recession specifically created by the globalists using the democratic muppets in order to destroy not only the US economy but most of the other countries and install the new world order
West Texas Intermediate Futures oil price drops to $18.27, it’s lowest since 2002. That’s the reason. So why isn’t gas $1.99 a gallon you ask? Because you live in California, that’s why. Votes count. Think about it.
WTI opened at $11 and change this morning IIRC. A perfect price for refiners to absolutely kill it with huge margins…if they can move product. Only in CA can you find CARB gasoline at 3.29/gal while crude is $0.27 a gal…($11.xx a bbl)
Weird times…
Yup Whome. And the spread between WTI and Brent is massive, indicating the obvious storage issues with WTI domestically now. I cant help but think that OXY winds up filing for Bankruptcy given their $39 Billion in debt and bonds that are trading at half of face value. Chevron dodged a big bullet on that one!
I guess that is one way to bump up our gas price at the pump.
This AM the “genius” business reporter on KTVU said that low oil prices were causing the stock market to decline. I’ve been driving for a lot of years, and I have never considered the oil companies to be my friend. They always seem to figure out a way to gouge the driving public to make huge profits. So, if their decline causes the market to fall, perhaps the market isn’t my friend either, and having it crash might be a good thing. It always struck me as a pyramid scheme anyway, where the monied interests dump a bunch of cash into the market, causing fools with a little extra to follow suit. The rich then cash out, the stocks fall, and the suckers foot the bill. Am I wrong to avoid stocks like the plague?
At these levels in the S&P 500 yes.
There are going to be a ton of bankruptcies in the Permian Basin of Texas by exploration and production companies given their heavy debt load and lack of cash flow. There will be tons of lay offs and “consolidation” in the industry.
But I wouldn’t make the leap in logic that if the oil companies aren’t your friend, then the stock market must not be your friend either.
There are a lot of great companies out there to be invested in. But like anything else, you have to operate from a solid knowledge base and have a good grasp on the fundamentals. It’s been my observation that people that treat the stock market as a passing fancy or a “hobby” don’t do real well. It’s one of the most competitive things that you can ever participate in. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Lottery, Stock Market. Same thing. Crap Shoot.
WTI (May – expires today?) is currently at -$37/bbl.
That’s NEGATIVE $37…
Yup.
It’s trading like Natural Gas has traded in some parts of the Permian, where it costs too much to truck it out (lack of pipelines and infrastructure) and it has actually traded negative at times.
The EPA in Texas usually looks the “other” way while they flare it off.
Man, I wish the Chinese didn’t knowingly and intentionally spread the virus worldwide after maliciously covering it up.
It’s a good thing that our President trusted his good friend President Xi instead of our military intelligence agencies.
You know Mike, if not for your bad case of TDS you would be a pretty interesting guy.
@Mike Wagner… So was it fun playing Cliff Clavin on “Cheers”?
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