Chicago Gasoline Drops After Citgo Completes Plant Maintenance

Chicago gasoline weakened after Citgo Petroleum Corp. completed maintenance at the Lemont refinery in Illinois.

The 170,500-barrel-a-day plant was scheduled to shut most of the main production units by May 1 for repairs expected to last four or five weeks, a person familiar with the plant’s operations said April 26. The equipment shut included a crude unit, coker, fluid catalytic cracker and alkylation unit, the person said.

The premium for conventional, 87-octane gasoline in Chicago dropped 19 cents to 14 cents a gallon versus futures trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 2:39 p.m., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Prompt delivery fell 18.54 cents to $2.7948 a gallon.

Citgo said maintenance was completed at the Lemont refinery in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

Conventional, 87-octane gasoline in the Gulf Coast rose 0.88 cent to a discount of 8.75 cents a gallon against futures.

Phillips 66 (PSX) reported a process upset yesterday at the Borger refinery in Texas, according to a filing with state regulators.

The company also released sulfur dioxide to a flare after a unit upset at its refinery in Westlake, Louisiana, according to a filing with the National Response Center. The release at 12:34 p.m. local time yesterday was secured and the upset was corrected, the filing showed.

Rich Johnson, a Phillips 66 spokesman, declined to comment on the upsets.

Conventional gasoline in New York Harbor weakened 0.12 cent to a premium of 1.88 cents versus futures.

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.