N.Y. Gasoline Gains Amid Sunoco Refinery Outage, Inventory Drop

Gasoline in New York strengthened after a power outage at Sunoco Inc. (SUN)’s Marcus Hook refinery and a fifth consecutive decline in East Coast inventories.

Sunoco experienced the outage on March 28 and began returning units to service later the same day, Lynda Rebarchak, a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. Gasoline inventories in the region fell 1.95 million barrels to 58.5 million barrels last week, according to the Energy Department.

The discount for conventional, 87-octane gasoline in New York Harbor narrowed 1 cent to 11.25 cents a gallon versus futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 3:44 p.m., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It was 19.5 cents on March 22. Prompt delivery rose 2.82 cents to $2.9515 a gallon.

Crude oil inputs at refineries on the East Coast slipped 135,000 barrels a day to 939,000 barrels, the government reported.

Gasoline in the Gulf Coast gained 0.5 cent to a discount of 11.50 cents versus May futures.

Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) is restarting an alkylation unit at its Texas City refinery in Texas, Shane Pochard, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. The unit was shut after a release of hydrofluoric acid and hydrocarbons March 27.

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Burkhardt in New York at pburkhardt@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net.