No Smoking at the Sunoco Delaware Refinery

[bamabikeguy]

Prices at the pump rose .10 cents last week.

Doesn't is always seem, shortly before the summer driving season, something "blows up" at a refinery?

This year is no exception, and in the buildup to $4 a gallon gas, just a rumor spiked a barrel by 10%, actual video footage of flames and smoke brought in higher speculations.

11 minutes ago:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090518...y_explosion;_ylt=Ao9Xey2FCI5moKEgMMOeREdvzwcF

CLAYMONT, Del. - Firefighters early Monday contained a blaze caused by an overnight explosion at a Delaware oil refinery that rattled nearby homes but caused no injuries.

A fireball from the blast at Sunoco Inc.'s Marcus Hook facility lit up the sky Sunday night. Fire trucks sprayed down flames shooting high into the air at the complex straddling the Delaware/Pennsylvania border.

Both authorities and company officials said no injuries were reported and no evacuations of surrounding neighborhoods were ordered.

All workers at the plant have been accounted for, Sunoco Inc. spokesman Thomas Golembeski said. The fire had not been put out but was contained.

He said the company was monitoring air quality every hour and the readings indicated that "the situation is safe."

New Castle County, Del., county councilman John Cartier said he could see the flames from his home at least three miles from the refinery and he felt the blast.

"It was almost like seismic," he told The (Wilmington) News Journal. "My house was rocked. It was a big large boom."

Authorities were still trying to determine what caused the explosion, which occurred at the refinery's ethylene complex. Ethylene is a feed stock used in the production of plastics. A Sunoco chemical plant adjacent to the refinery produces polypropylene.

Golembeski said the explosion and fire was contained to the ethylene unit inside the refinery and did not affect the chemical plant.

But some refining production in other units was affected, and he said the company was working with two of its upriver refineries - at Philadelphia and Westville, N.J. - to "optimize production" and meet customer demands.

He did not specify how much production was affected at facility that processes about 175,000 barrels of sweet crude oil per day into various petroleum products such as gasoline, jet fuel and home heating oil.

According to the most recent U.S. Department of Energy ranking of the nation's 150 operable refineries, Marcus Hook was ranked 39th for total production.

The refinery sits on a 781-acre site along an international seaport, and it operates around the clock seven days a week with about 700 employees. It refines oil primarily from fields in the North Sea and West Africa.

Over the years I watched the robins arrive in the spring, then just counted the days until a Texas storage facility went "booooom" and the public was bilked out of another dollar per gallon.

But Delaware got the jump on Houston this year.

If I was the Wag the Dog conspiracy type, I'd compare the Delaware footage to the Houston petro bar-b-ques, the flames look identical and the footage is always shot at night, to increase the petro-shock effect on the east coast.

 

[bamabikeguy]

Wow, that was instantaneous.

NPR 30 seconds ago said average gallon shot up to $2.30, on the Trudy Lunberg Monday Morning survey.

Last night they said $2.21 on my evening news.

(I keep up with these things.)

 

[SimpleSimon]

You, sir, are a true cynic.

I like that in a man, it shows he is thinking.

 

[FightForTheCause]

I love a good conspiracy...........

 

[eastwoodo4]

they dont need a fire to jack up the prices.they do and will do anything they want.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional start of the summer travel season, and the month of May is the traditional period for the gasoline producers to begin gouging by raising prices 20-30%. Nothing new about any of it, they've done exactly that annually for more than a decade.

 

[Pablo]

Can't happen. We don't have an "oil man" in the White House.

 

[POPS]

Wow, that was instantaneous.

NPR 30 seconds ago said average gallon shot up to $2.30, on the Trudy Lunberg Monday Morning survey.

Last night they said $2.21 on my evening news.

(I keep up with these things.)

Over $4.50 a gallon here and riseing..Really sucks...POPS

 

[SimpleSimon]

Can't happen. We don't have an "oil man" in the White House.

Currently, the price here has jumped from about $1.90/gallon 10 days ago to about $2.20/gallon as of today. By the end of the month it will almost certainly be at $2.50/gallon or more. A rise of 30%+.

Wanna bet it doesn't?

 

[bamabikeguy]

2 motorized bikes in every garage, and the oil wars are ovah !!