Oil Refineries

Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait rank one, two and three in worldwide oil reserves. The three countries are also among the top 10 in crude oil production. Iran ranks fourth in oil reserves and crude oil production. The United Arab Emirates ranks fifth in crude reserves and eighth in oil production. Saudi Arabia 1. Tannurah 2. Jidda 3. Jubayl 4. Yanbu 5. Ras al Khafji Iraq 7. Basra 8. Dura 9. K3-Haditha 10. Khanaqin 11. Kirkuk 12. Baiji 13. Mufthia 14. Qaiyarah, Mosul Kuwait 15. Shuaiba 16.

Consumer Watchdog, saying that refineries operating in the state may have falsified information to help boost gasoline prices, wants the California attorney general to launch a criminal investigation. The advocacy group made its request in a letter to state Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris. “It appears that California's oil refineries falsified public information to drive up the price of gasoline," Consumer Watchdog's president, Jamie Court, and energy project director, Liza Tucker, said in the letter.

An early-morning explosion at the largest of Kuwait's three oil refineries killed four workers, injured 49 and seriously damaged the facility, authorities said. The blast was caused by a gas leak, but it was unclear what had ignited the escaping gas, said the Mina Al Ahmadi refinery's operations manager, Hamza Bakhash. The fire was under control by midmorning, he said.

Texas oil giant Tesoro Corp. said it will spend $2.5 billion to buy a sprawling refinery in Carson and other assets -- including the Arco brand -- from rival BP. The move would leave most of California's gasoline production in the hands of just two companies: Tesoro and Chevron Corp. The deal would greatly boost Tesoro's presence in the region. The San Antonio company already has agreements with more than 1,200 stations nationwide that sell its gas under the Shell, USA Gasoline and Tesoro brands.

ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. oil company, said Wednesday that it would spend $1.2 billion to expand its West Coast refineries, part of an aggressive plan to invest more than $4 billion by 2011 to increase its U.S. refining capacity. The projects, targeting nine of ConocoPhillips' 12 U.S. refineries, would allow the plants to process more oil, increase their ability to process high-sulfur crude oil and produce clean fuels, senior executives told analysts in New York.

Two oil refineries with histories of polluting the environment have been ordered by the fire chief to find ways of preventing and handling spills of hazardous materials. The refineries, Powerine Oil Co. and Golden West Refining Co., also will be required to upgrade equipment, Fire Chief Robert Wilson said. "Although we've never had a large-scale spill with serious injuries, we don't want to take any chances," Wilson said.

Federal, state and local investigators converged on the Texaco refinery in Wilmington on Friday in an effort to determine what caused the mammoth blast that tore through the plant Thursday night, injuring 16 and smashing windows several miles away. Texaco officials said the explosion, which occurred in a processing tower used to convert heavy crude oil into fuels such as gasoline and kerosene, could have resulted from a leak in a high-pressure fuel pipe, but it was too early to tell.

Nearly 130 firefighters battled a blaze at a Wilmington refinery Thursday that injured six people and sent flames leaping 50 feet into the air. The fire started shortly after 5 p.m. in a storage tank containing thick crude oil at the Ultramar Refinery at 2402 E. Anaheim St., fire officials said. Before it was contained about an hour later, the blaze forced the closure of a nearly four-mile stretch of the Terminal Island Freeway and sent a column of black smoke billowing toward Long Beach.

A small explosion inside a million-dollar crude oil processing unit at the Paramount Petroleum refinery sparked a two-alarm blaze that burned for two hours Tuesday afternoon before county firefighters could put it out, officials said. The 1:20 p.m. refinery fire at Downey Avenue and Compton Boulevard was confined to the unit, which uses hydrogen to cleanse crude oil of sulfur contents, said Battalion Chief Gordon S. Pearson of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Security guards at the Conoco-Phillips refinery in Billings detained two high school students for an alleged breach of security -- they were taking photos of the refinery for a school project. Senior High students Wiley Miller and Jeramy Harrison had one hour to get a photo for "A Day in the Life of Billings" on April 4. As Harrison clicked a shot of steam pouring from a refinery tower, they heard a security guard yell, "No photos."

A "major emergency" fire that consumed most of a two-story office building Monday at a ConocoPhillips oil refinery was knocked down and did not affect any other refinery facilities, officials said. The knockdown was declared shortly after 8 a.m., nearly four hours after the fire was reported, according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Matt Spence. A total of 166 firefighters battled the blaze, which was limited to an administrative building. "This free-standing structure was located some distance away from the refinery itself," Spence said.

Gunmen loyal to Moammar Kadafi pulled off a daring attack Monday at a major oil refinery inside what was supposedly rebel-held territory in eastern Libya, killing 17 guards. The strike at the facility near Ras Lanuf, on the Mediterranean coast, underscored warnings from Libya's transitional rulers that the nation remains insecure as long as Kadafi is free and publicly urging his followers to carry out a guerrilla war. "We can't be complacent: We must always be vigilant," said Jalal Gallal, a spokesman for the rebel-led transitional administration, whose forces recently drove Libya's longtime ruler from the capital, Tripoli.

Reporting from Jerusalem -- Israeli billionaire Sammy Ofer, whose powerful, family-owned conglomerate is under scrutiny for alleged dealings with Iran, died Friday in Tel Aviv after a long illness. He was 89. Considered Israel's richest man with a family fortune estimated by Forbes at $10.3 billion, Ofer and his brother, Yuli, built Ofer Bros. Group into Israel's biggest private enterprise, with interests in shipping, oil refineries, chemicals, semiconductors, banking and media. "Ofer was a Zionist through and through, and never forgot his commitment to others, even when he ascended to great heights," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A gas leak and not sabotage caused an explosion Tuesday at a newly inaugurated section of an oil refinery in Abadan just before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, state media reported. But Ahmadinejad quickly drew criticism from a lawmaker and some staff members at the refinery who suggested that the facility in the southwestern city was launched too soon, a semiofficial news agency reported. The blast, which killed as many as four people and injured up to 25 more, did not halt Ahmadinejad's speech, which included fairly typical denunciations of U.S. relations with Middle East autocrats and the course of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, according to news agencies.

Dispirited rebel fighters continued their headlong retreat across eastern Libya on Wednesday, surrendering a strategic oil city they captured just three days earlier and fleeing eastward by the hundreds. Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi appeared poised late in the day to seize a second oil refinery city, Port Brega, as rebels in gun trucks near the city turned and fled at the sound of exploding rockets and artillery. Kadafi's men had pushed rebels out of Ras Lanuf, site of a petrochemical complex and port, on Wednesday morning.

The powerful earthquake and tsunami that slammed northern Japan knocked out car plants and steel mills, stranded thousands in offices and at Disney's resort in Tokyo, and pummeled financial markets in Asia and Europe. But the biggest effect on the world economy may yet come in further roiling oil prices that already have cast a pall on the global recovery. That's because the 8.9-magnitude temblor forced the shutdown of a number of Japan's oil refining facilities as well as some of its nuclear power plants.

Workers spent Wednesday getting the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo back on line after it was shut down for more than 24 hours in the wake of a transformer failure the day before. The loss of power that occurred from 2 to 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday set off a chain of events that required the refinery to be shut down until late Wednesday afternoon because of a loss of steam in the refinery yard. Steam is used to power the pumps and the turbines heating and cooling the refinery.

Federal regulators have approved air permitting for a proposed oil refinery in Arizona, eliminating a major obstacle for what could be the first such plant built in the United States since the 1970s. The refinery would be built by Phoenix-based Arizona Clean Fuels on desert land 40 miles east of Yuma. Arizona, one of the fastest-growing states, has seen gasoline prices spike several times in recent years.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a timetable Thursday to curtail greenhouse gas emissions from two major sources of the pollution scientists link to global warming: power plants and oil refineries. The announcement was the latest step in an ambitious effort to begin taking action on climate change, and it is certain to draw fire from congressional Republicans and industry leaders who have promised to halt the agency's efforts. The new move toward far-reaching emissions rules comes as environmentalists had begun to worry that the Obama administration was easing its push in order to avoid confrontations with major industries in advance of the 2012 presidential campaign.

Eleven major oil refineries and industrial plants in the Los Angeles area will be forced to slash sulfur pollution by more than 2,000 tons a year under sweeping new regulations, but the move may not be enough to meet federal health standards for the region unless the state maintains strict curbs on truck pollution. The new rule, adopted by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, takes aim at airborne sulfur that, along with other pollutants, forms soot. It effectively halves the amount of sulfur oxides that can be emitted in the district, which covers Orange County and major portions of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.