Exxon Mobil's Joliet Refinery Shutdown Extended After Floodwater Overwhelms Pump

Exxon Mobil's major refinery in Joliet, Illinois, remains shut down after a new operational issue emerged days after a power failure knocked the facility offline. The company disclosed in a filing on Thursday that floodwater had overwhelmed a pump, extending the outage at a key fuel supplier for the U.S. Midwest.

Outage Details

The 275,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery was initially taken offline on Sunday following a power outage. In a statement Thursday, Exxon confirmed the source was found on primary and secondary power lines operated by ComEd and that electricity had been fully restored.

However, a separate regulatory filing revealed the subsequent pump failure due to floodwater. Exxon deployed a containment boom as part of the cleanup effort, according to the filing. The company declined to comment on whether the pump issue was related to the initial power outage. As of Thursday, the refinery remained offline, according to energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

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Market Impact

The extended disruption at the Joliet facility, which can produce approximately 11 million gallons per day of gasoline and diesel, adds pressure to an already strained fuel market. The outage comes amid global supply concerns stemming from conflict in the Middle East and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries.

This regional supply disruption coincides with rising fuel costs in the United States. According to market reports, the national average price for diesel surpassed $6 a gallon last week and continued to climb. An earlier estimate from industry monitor IIR Energy had projected a return to normal service by the end of this week, a timeline now in question due to the latest complication.