Marathon’s Garyville, Louisiana, refinery fire nearly out, says company

Aug 25 (Reuters) – Marathon Petroleum Corp (MPC.N) said on Friday night a fire at its 596,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Garyville, Louisiana refinery was nearly extinguished, but fire suppression work was continuing to prevent flareups.

The company will begin evaluating restarting units closest to the fire that were shut earlier in the day “out of an abundance of caution,” said Marathon spokesperson Jamal Kheiry.

Two giant naphtha storage tanks on the south side of the refinery near the Mississippi River erupted in flames on Friday morning following a chemical leak, sending a huge plume of black smoke over the largely rural area 38 miles (67 km) west of New Orleans on Friday morning.

Late on Friday afternoon, St. John the Baptist Parish President Jaclyn Hotard lifted a mandatory evacuation for residents living within two miles of the refinery, according to a spokesperson for the parish.

The blaze destroyed both storage tanks, melting the walls of one to the ground and almost as much for the other, according to video broadcast from local media outlets.

One firefighter was examined for heat stress. No other injuries were reported, Kheiry said.

Three large semi trucks hauled fire suppression foam and firefighting equipment on Friday from Marathon’s Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas to Garyville, said people familiar with operations at Galveston Bay.

Garyville, like much of the U.S. Gulf Coast, is under an excessive heat warning, with the temperature reaching 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) on Friday afternoon.

Marathon’s Garyville refinery is the third-largest in the United States by capacity.

Kheiry said Marathon would investigate the fire’s cause.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an organization critical of the oil and gas industry’s safety and environmental record, faulted lax oversight by the state of Louisiana for the fire.

“The petrochemical industry is here in Louisiana for one reason only: to make as much money as possible,” said Anne Rolfes, executive director of the organization.

“As long as the state of Louisiana continues to look away from fires and mushroom clouds, these accidents will continue.”

Greg Langley, press secretary for the Louisiana Department of Environment Quality, declined to comment on the Bucket Brigade statement.

Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston; additional reporting by Brijesh Patel in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Deepa Babington and Grant McCool

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