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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sharp_End_Of_Drill who wrote (2054)	3/20/2001 7:12:09 PM
From: excardog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Tuesday March 20, 1:18 pm Eastern Time Valero, UDS say refineries unaffected by blackouts HOUSTON, March 20 (Reuters) - Both Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE:VLO - news) and Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corp. (NYSE:UDS - news) said on Tuesday their Californian oil refineries had not suffered any loss of power as California braced for a second day of rolling blackouts. Valero spokeswoman Mary Rose Brown said the 135,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) oil refinery at Benicia, near San Francisco, had not been affected by the blackouts as of Tuesday morning and did not expect to be unless a ``doomsday scenario'' developed in which power only flowed to emergency facilities such as hospitals. UDS also said its two California refineries had not suffered any loss of power so far as a result of the blackouts. The company operates the 168,000 bpd Golden Eagle refinery near San Francisco and a 78,000 bpd refinery at Wilmington, near Los Angeles. California power officials on Tuesday ordered a second day of rolling blackouts amid a severe shortage of electricity. Brown said Valero was also tracking the progress of a bill through California's state legislature that seeks to make oil refineries exempt from rolling blackouts which are imposed at times of acute electricity shortages. ``If you shut down a refinery for couple of hours then you have to shut it down for a couple of days,'' Brown said. ``California can't afford to lose that many days of production. There's such a tight supply balance, you would see price spikes at the pump immediately,'' she added. Valero's Benicia refinery was one of several on the U.S. West Coast that faced difficulties in transporting refined products in January of this year when Kinder Morgan's (NYSE:KMP - news) Pacific pipeline system was hit by several lengthy power outages. On Monday, Valero's board approved plans to build a 51-megawatt gas-fired power generation plant at the Benicia refinery in an attempt to insulate it from California's power shortages. Valero said the $57 million plant could begin operating as early as April 2002.