Fire out and shelter-in-place order is lifted after oil refinery explosion near Texas coast

HOUSTON — An oil refinery fire near the Texas coast was put out Tuesday and a shelter-in-place order was lifted following air-quality testing, hours after a large explosion at the complex shot plumes of smoke into the air, officials said.

No one was injured in Monday's explosion at the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Houston, Carol Hebert, a Valero spokesperson, said in a statement.

“All personnel are accounted for,” Herbert said.

Images and video posted online show a large plume of smoke and flames billowing out from the refinery.

At Tuesday's City Council meeting, Mayor Charlotte M. Moses said she was grateful the explosion wasn't more serious.

“With something like that, we definitely could have had mass loss of life and injuries,” Moses said. “I'm just thankful and grateful that all we encountered was a fire ... We're safe."

She had urged residents in parts of the west side of the city to stay put during the shelter-in-place order.

Air monitoring that was done by Valero, the Port Arthur Fire Department and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality “confirmed there was no threat to air quality,” Hebert said.

“The cause of the fire is under investigation,” she said.

Residents at least several miles away said they felt their homes shake. Some schools in the area were closed Tuesday as a precaution.

The explosion comes amid a spike in gas prices driven by uncertainty over the global oil supply because of the Iran war.

Valero did not immediately reply to emails asking for additional information on the extent of the damage at the refinery and what units at the facility were impacted by the fire.

But if the refinery's diesel hydrotreater unit was damaged, that could likely exacerbate the prices of diesel and jet fuel, which have already gone up because of the Iran war, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president for energy and innovation at the University of Houston. Even without the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the lack of production from this plant due to a fire would still affect diesel and jet fuel prices as it would “have a huge impact on the amount of diesel that gets into the marketplace," Krishnamoorti said. But the war will make the impact worse, he added.

Most goods in the U.S. are moved by trucks that run on diesel, and increased transportation costs will eventually be felt by consumers, Krishnamoorti said.

“That’s gonna be a pretty significant impact on everything that comes downstream in terms of things that have hit the grocery shelves. Prices of eggs will go up. Prices of milk will go up, even a few cents. But it’s gonna have an impact on all of us,” Krishnamoorti said.

The refinery has about 770 employees and can process about 435,000 barrels of oil per day, according to Valero’s website. The plant refines heavy sour crude oil into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

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Golden reported from Seattle.