Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, Europe's second-largest oil company, sought gasoline supplies after a disruption last week at Petroplus Holdings AG's U.K. Coryton refinery cut fuel output.

BP is working with Petroplus to source fuel ``while the refinery comes back online,'' Mark Salt, a BP spokesman, said today by telephone from Milton Keynes, England. Georgina Clark, a Coryton-based Petroplus spokeswoman, referred Bloomberg News to the company's headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, where a call wasn't immediately returned.

Fuel shortages have been reported in parts of the East Anglia region, east of London, because of delays in deliveries to filling stations, Petrol Retailers Association Director Ray Holloway said by telephone, without specifying the extent of the shortfall.

About 80 percent of the gasoline produced at the 172,000- barrel-a-day Coryton refinery is supplied to service stations in and around London, according to the AA, the nation's biggest motoring group.

The plant was forced to shut on Oct. 24 following a boiler malfunction when steam was pumped into a naphtha unit, according to the Essex County Fire & Rescue Service. The refinery began to resume operations later that day, a Coryton official said at the time. Naphtha is used in gasoline and petrochemical production.

BP attributed the Coryton closure to a power failure, in a letter sent to employees at its service station in Ipswich and recounted by Ram Bala, a worker there. The refinery was expected to restart in four days, Bala said, citing the letter. The Ipswich filling station has run out of gasoline, he added.

Wrong Fuel

After the Oct. 24 shutdown, a second incident was reported related to the Coryton plant. The refinery delivered the wrong type of fuel to forecourts earlier this week, resulting in some service stations running dry, Holloway said.

Thirty-six percent of the refinery's output is gasoline and 27 percent is diesel, according to the U.K.'s Petroleum Industry Association. Coryton's fluid catalytic cracker, a unit involved in gasoline production, has a capacity of 68,000 barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Fuel shortages at BP, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and J Sainsbury Plc forecourts around the Ipswich area were reported by the East Anglian Daily Times on its Web site yesterday, citing company officials.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nidaa Bakhsh in London at nbakhsh@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 31, 2008 11:25 EDT