WHITING, Ind. — Last Thursday, the BP refinery in Whiting in Northwest Indiana experienced a plant-wide power outage, leading to the company having to burn off product, evacuate more than a thousand employees, and send black smoke and flames shooting into the sky. This Thursday, locals felt the aftershock while paying at the pump.
“It went up. what are you going to do?” said Kevin Majors, filling up his gas tank at a local gas station. “Whatever happens to an oil company, they’re going to use that to raise the prices so, that’s just the way it is.”
BP told WGN News they’re making progress on the work to restore the refinery to normal operations, but some experts believe the process could take up to three weeks.
Those familiar with the operation said units and piping need to be inspected at the facility, which is the largest in the Midwest and processes nearly half-a-million barrels of crude oil per day.
“That means very quickly we could see a disruption of the flow of gasoline and we could see an impact at the pump,” said Patrick De Haan, Gas Buddy oil & refined products analyst, last week. “I would say that, for now, based on what we know, some safe assumptions there could be an impact of 10-25 cents a gallon.”
According to AAA, regular gas prices rose by 10 cents a gallon in 24 hours from Wednesday to Thursday this week.
Moving forward, BP is still working to determine a cause of the power outage, while a public meeting is planned for Thursday night at East Chicago Central High School.
The meeting, hosted by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, will allow local residents to ask questions on the circumstances surrounding the BP power outage.
Read More: Gas prices rise as BP searches for answers behind outage at NW Indiana oil