MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil is defending its handling of an outage at its Los Angeles refinery following a blast in February 2015 after a prominent trading company told a state commission that the process had lacked transparency, reported Reuters.
Speaking before a committee of the California Energy Commission on Tuesday, Brad Lucas, a West Coast trader for Vitol, said that lack of information about the restart of the refinery made it difficult to time cargo deliveries into the West Coast market.
Lucas said at the meeting that, "In my opinion, there was a lack of transparency with what was going on with Torrance."
He said Exxon kept saying the Torrance refinery would come back online "next month".
The explosion at Exxon Mobil's 149 Mbpd Torrance refinery, which provides about 10% of California's gasoline supply, knocked a gasoline-producing unit offline for more than a year.
The higher prices created an incentive for traders to import fuel into California, but only if they could gauge when prices might fall after a refinery restart.
"ExxonMobil is committed to the highest standards of business conduct and rejects these allegations," ExxonMobil said in an emailed statement on Thursday. "We have operated responsibly and in strict compliance with all laws."
Vitol said in a statement Friday "there was a lack of clarity regarding the restart date for the refinery," but added that it had "never suggested the lack of clarity was the responsibility of ExxonMobil, nor that ExxonMobil mislead the market."
The meeting by the Commission's Petroleum Market Advisory Committee was to discuss gasoline price volatility and policy alternatives to mitigate price spikes.
PBF Energy acquired the Torrance facility from Exxon on July 1.
As MRC informed before, ExxonMobil’s refinery in Torrance, California suffered a setback on 20 June, when a 300-ton crane collapsed while moving debris at 9:30 A.M. PT. Three workers suffered minor injuries during the accident. No reports have been issued of damage to the refinery itself. The refinery’s flare system was activated to ensure the safety of refinery workers when operations were halted, and the Torrance Fire Department was onsite to prevent the possibility of a fire or vapor leak.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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