By Nicole Jao
NEW YORK, Sept 17 (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil said floodwater overwhelmed a pump at its 275,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Joliet, Illinois, according to a filing on Thursday.
A containment boom had been deployed as part of the cleanup effort, the filing shows.
Exxon took the Joliet refinery offline on Sunday after a power outage triggered the facility’s safety flare.
The source of the outage was found on ComEd’s primary and secondary power lines feeding into the Joliet refinery, the company said in a statement on Thursday, adding that power to the refinery was fully restored.
The company declined to say whether the pump issue was linked to the power outage.
Industry monitor IIR Energy had expected return to normal service by the end of this week.
The refinery remains offline as of Thursday, according to Wood Mackenzie.
The refinery flared again on Wednesday, according to Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, who posted about the incident on X.
The Joliet refinery is a key fuel supplier to the U.S. Midwest. According to the company’s website, it can produce about 11 million gallons per day of gasoline and diesel fuel.
The disruption comes amid a tight global fuel market, with the conflict in the Middle East and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries putting pressure on fuel supplies.
The U.S. national average price of diesel surpassed $6 a gallon last week and continued to rise this week.
(Reporting by Nicole Jao in New York; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Cynthia Osterman)
