Refinery outage causes price concerns

Crude oil and gasoline in New York rose after ConocoPhillips said that its Alliance refinery in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, had a power failure earlier today.

ConocoPhillips, the largest U.S. refiner, said the 250,000 barrel-a-day facility lost power at 6 a.m. local time. U.S. refiners boost gasoline output in May before the peak summer demand. Refineries operated at 92.5 percent of capacity last week, up 0.8 percentage point from the week before, according to the median of responses in a Bloomberg survey.

``We are just a refinery outage away from a major rise in prices,'' said John Kilduff, senior vice president of energy risk management with Fimat USA Inc. in New York. ``We can't afford for any of the country's refineries to be down for a day right now. We are going into gasoline season and distillate supplies are low.''

as reported here.