XOM Sells Troubled Torrance Refinery -- October 22, 2015

For the archives. The Daily Breeze is reporting:

ExxonMobil Corp., hounded by regulatory investigations into its safety record since a February explosion tore through the company’s Torrance refinery, confirmed Wednesday it has sold the crippled plant for $537.5 million to independent refiner PBF Energy.

“The sale results from a strategic assessment of the site and how it fits with our refining portfolio,” Jerry Wascom, president of ExxonMobil Refining & Supply Co., said in a statement.“ExxonMobil regularly adjusts its portfolio through investment, restructuring or divestment consistent with overall global and regional business strategies.” [Incredibly tactful. From the Hillary Clinton school of public relations.]

The announcement Wednesday afternoon comes a year to the day after industry sources confirmed to the Daily Breeze that the refinery was on the block. That would-be buyer turned out to be New Jersey-based PBF, which will become the fifth largest independent refiner in the United States once the sale of the Torrance refinery closes.

ExxonMobil’s 700 employees, including about 600 at the 750-acre refinery itself, were informed of the sale shortly after 1 p.m. All were offered jobs with PBF.
Another 700 contract workers also are expected to continue working at the refinery.

The deal will close the second quarter of 2016. Keep that date in mind -- 2Q16 -- when you read the following from The Los Angeles Times, dated September 23, 2015, before the sale of the refinery was announced:

Just when Southern California motorists were expecting to see some relief from high gasoline prices in the next few weeks, they now may have to wait well into next winter — at least.

Exxon Mobil Corp., still at loggerheads with air quality regulators over a short-term fix for the company's damaged Torrance refinery, appears poised to build a new pollution-control system that meets antipollution specifications, several experts briefed on the matter said.

One of them, oil industry analyst Bob van der Valk, said he learned this week from people who knew about the plans that Exxon has decided to abandon short-term repairs and pursue a longer-term approach that would bring the plant back to full capacity in mid-February.

"They're dead in the water for gasoline," Van der Valk said. "They took everybody off the [short-term] project."

Exxon executives would not comment except to say the company has been working with all agencies and will continue to work with the air quality regulators.

Since an explosion damaged the refinery in February, Exxon has been proposing to use an old pollution-control device, one that doesn't meet air quality standards, to get the plant operating while it worked on a permanent repair.

I assume XOM will have no interest in working with the state on getting this refinery back into full operation -- the article says as much -- the project is "dead in the water." Meanwhile, I doubt XOM will have much interest in letting the new buyer start any work while XOM still owns the refinery -- and, of course, the sale could still be delayed. 

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New Tortoise Species Found In The Galapagos 

Despite global warming and the threat of all those species extinctions, lo and behold, a new tortoise species is found in / on the Galapagos archipelago. FoxNews, fair and balanced, is reporting:

Thanks to DNA testing from tortoise bones that were almost a century old and found in museums in Wisconsin, the United Kingdom and Galapagos, an international team writing in the journal PLOS One this week has identified a second species on the island.

They concluded that a few hundred giant tortoises living on the eastern side of Santa Cruz are distinct from a second, larger population living less than 6.2 miles away on the western side. The new species, C. donfaustoi, is named after a retiring park ranger who spent decades protecting the tortoises.