Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, stopped supplying crude oil to Big West of California LLC’s Bakersfield, California, refinery after the bankruptcy of Flying J Inc., Big West’s parent company.

“We stopped selling crude oil to them Dec. 23, a day after the bankruptcy,” Shell spokeswoman Alison Chassin said today in a telephone interview.

Shell normally supplied about 10,000 barrels of oil a day to the 68,000-barrel-a-day refinery, Chassin said.

“We have been in ongoing discussions with them since they filed for bankruptcy” to work out an arrangement to supply oil to the plant in the future, Chassin said without elaborating.

Closely held Flying J filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 22 blaming a cash crises brought on by a decline in oil prices. Oil futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange have plunged 72 percent since touching a record $147.27 a barrel in July as a global recession trimmed energy demand.

A North Salt Lake City refinery owned by Big West Oil LLC, another Flying J subsidiary, has been purchasing crude on a day- to-day basis since the bankruptcy, plant manager Joel Elstein said in a Dec. 30 interview. The Utah plant had been buying oil on a monthly basis.

To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Tuttle in New York at rtuttle@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 8, 2009 13:36 EST