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BP (NYSE:BP) plans to restart its Whiting, Indiana, refinery – the largest in the Midwest – in the last week of February and return to full production in March, Reuters reported Wednesday.
The Whiting refinery was shut on February 1 by a plant-wide power outage initially attributed to the failure of two transformers at the refinery, and BP (BP) has been assessing refinery units and internal piping for possible damage from the sudden shutdown as well as determining the exact cause of the power loss, according to the report.
Retail gasoline prices in the Chicago area have increased more than $0.20/gal since the refinery shut down.
The Whiting refinery is BP’s (BP) biggest in the U.S. and the country’s sixth largest overall, processing 440K bbl/day of crude oil, making a variety of liquid fuels and asphalt; it is the biggest fuel supplier to the Chicago area.