For all its painful ubiquity, “disruption” is not a word usually thrown around when discussing oil refining. The business of taking toxic raw materials and turning them into useful fuels inside a mess of pipes and tanks is as old-school as it gets.
Even so, Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s $36 billion acquisition of Andeavor, sprung Monday morning, is at least partly an attempt to capitalize on, and get ahead of, some big disruptions both happening now and about to hit the oil market.