All of the datapoints on this event look sketchy.  I’m not saying there was intentional foul play at work, but the appearance of foul play in combination with the obtuse descriptions therein, cannot be avoided.  It just looks sketchy.

Exxon’s key refinery in Joliet, Illinois, produces gasoline and diesel fuel.  The facility handles 275,000 barrels of crude per day, producing about 11 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel every day. {SOURCE}

The refinery operation has been offline for a week following a power disruption “found on ComEd’s primary and secondary power lines feeding into the Joliet refinery.”  The company made the statement on Thursday, adding that power to the refinery was fully restored.  However, with the power turned off floodwater overwhelmed a pumping station leading to flooding around the refinery which has compounded the outage.

The timing of this; the type of problem, together with the location (40 miles southwest of Chicago, Ill, near the intersection of Interstate 55 and the DesPlaines River) are aligned datapoints in a review of the consequence.  Given the nature of geopolitics right now and the intention to politically weaponize the price of gasoline and diesel, everything just looks too coincidental.

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. (source)

Suspicious Cat remains, well, suspicious….

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