(Bloomberg) — A fire at Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Baytown, Texas, refinery injured four people and sent gasoline futures surging.
The blaze occurred at 1 a.m. local time at the plant, which is the fourth-largest in the U.S., processing more half a million barrels of oil a day. Gasoline trading in New York jumped as much as 4 cents per gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The blaze is under control and four injured workers are in stable condition after being transferred to a local hospital, said Casey Cook, a public information officer at the Baytown Fire Department.
The fire comes as U.S. gasoline stockpiles hit their lowest for this time of year since 2015. Gasoline futures, meanwhile, are at their highest seasonally in eight years. Prices were up 1% at 9:15 a.m. in New York.
It’s the second such blaze at Baytown in the last two years. In 2019 a fire on the plastic-producing side of the industrial complex injured about 37 people.
Thursday’s fire occurred in a unit that removes sulfur from refined products such as gasoline, Exxon spokeswoman Julia King said in an emailed statement. Air quality monitoring at the site and fence line has shown no adverse impact so far, she said.
Exxon on Wednesday reported a leak at one of Baytown’s sulfur-removal units, according to a filing with a state regulator. The leak was discovered at around 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to the filing.
(Updates with new details throughout.)
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