Tesoro completes turnaround at Nikiski

Tesoro Corp. has completed its turnaround at the Nikiski refinery.

The company said in February that it planned a full turnaround at its Kenai Peninsula refinery, beginning in April or May and lasting less than a month.

Bruce Smith, Tesoro chairman, president and CEO, said in a May 7 analysts’ call that a full turnaround at the company’s Alaska refinery began April 21 and was expected to take about 20 days.

“All maintenance work at the refinery has been completed and it is expected to resume full operation early this week,” Lynn Westfall, Tesoro senior vice president and chief economist, told Petroleum News in a May 11 e-mail.

In response to a question about how the refinery would replace the Cook Inlet crude oil which it previously obtained from the west side of Cook Inlet — currently shut-in due to the shutdown of the Drift River Terminal following volcanic activity at Mount Redoubt — Westfall said the Cook Inlet crude would be replaced from the company’s supply system that feeds its other four refineries on the Pacific Rim “and we do not expect any impact from the production declines (in Cook Inlet). Crudes will be sourced from various worldwide markets,” he said.

Westfall told the Alaska Legislature in March that the refinery, originally designed for Cook Inlet crude oil, was — before the Redoubt volcanic activity — obtaining 25 percent of its crude oil from Cook Inlet, 50 percent from the North Slope and 25 percent from elsewhere in the world.

—Kristen Nelson