Chicago area gas prices could rise after outage at BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana
CHICAGO (CBS) – Drivers in the Chicago area and Northwest Indiana could see higher prices at the pump after an outage at the BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, on Thursday.
Power was restored at the refinery on Friday, and operations were returning to normal.
BP notified officials in Whiting of a power outage at the refinery on Thursday. As a precaution, the plant was evacuated, and fires typically seen shooting out of the refinery's stacks were increased to burn off extra oil during the outage.
Patrick DeHaan, an analyst with GasBuddy, said drivers could expect a modest increase in gas prices in the Chicago area and Northwest Indiana as a result of the trouble at the BP refinery in Whiting.
That refinery churns out 10 million gallons of gasoline per day, so an hours-long disruption in production will inevitably lead to a rise in gas prices in the region, but DeHaan said it won't be as bad as after some other problems at the plant in the past.
"This is not going to be like some of those past incidents where prices skyrocket. Rather, because this is happening in the winter, when demand is lower, we're expecting a smaller increase at the pump compared to prior incidents," he said.
DeHaan said the flaring of the stacks at the refinery was standard procedure when there is an outage.
"This refinery is over 100 years old, and power is kind of one of those really important things to a refinery, and when it gets knocked out, you can see a lot of flames on those flare stacks, burning off that excess pressure, due to the emergency shutdown. So this is not the first time we've seen this refinery flaring. This is routine if there are disruptions," DeHaan said.
What was unusual on Thursday was seeing all of the flare stacks at the refinery burning at once.
"Several flare stacks burning off that pressure is certainly abnormal," DeHaan said.
BP has said no one was injured as a result of the outage. Air monitoring did not detect any elevated readings around the facility and officials said there was no danger to the public.