Fire rips through massive Exxon Mobil oil refinery in Louisiana

HOUSTON/LONDON : A fire broke out overnight at Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Baton Rouge oil refinery in Louisiana, halting production at the fifth-biggest fuel-making plant in the US.

The outage at the massive complex — which supplies fuel products across the southeast US and all the way to New York Harbor — means the refinery needs fewer barrels of crude oil, depressing a market already reeling from the coronavirus crisis in China. But it could help ease a gasoline glut in the Gulf Coast, where stockpiles hit a record in late January.

The blaze erupted in a natural gas line, affecting first one and then all of the facility’s crude distillation towers — which heat and break down raw oil into products — according to people familiar with operations. As a result, other units such as the catalytic cracker and the chemical plant had to cease operations.