Reuters cited Kern County planning division head as saying that the approval would help reopen the closed refinery.
Located at Alon USA Energy’s Bakersfield plant, the facility is likely to increase its crude offloading capacity from its current 13,000 bpd to 140,000 bpd, while allowing significant access to cheaper crude from inland US and Canada.
In late 2012, the company was forced to close the 70,000bpd Bakersfield refinery because of expensive imports; further, lack of significant rail meant less access to other crudes.
Kern County planning and community development department director Lorelei Oviatt said: "We’re supportive of what Alon is doing with this refinery."
"This refinery is not operating at full capacity. We would like to see this refinery operating at full capacity."
Several other refineries in California are also struggling to generate profits due to their heavy dependence on expensive imported crude. Over 50% of the 1.7 million barrels of crude processed each day by refineries in the state is imported.
California refiners want to tap cheap crude in Texas, North Dakota and Canada via rail because no major pipelines are being planned to carry the cheap bounty from those regions into the state.
Image: Several refineries in California are struggling to generate profits due to their heavy dependence on expensive imported crude. Photo: courtesy of khunaspix/ Freedigitalphotos.net.
