Torrance city officials announced the long-awaited restart of the ExxonMobil Refinery, scheduled to begin sometime between 7pm Saturday and 7am Sunday. The South Coast Air Quality Management District Hearing Board narrowly agreed in April to allow the company to restart the refinery, amid safety concerns from local residents and business owners.
ExxonMobil will restart operations without using their pollution-control equipment, meaning the restart will produce emissions that violate clean air standards. They are doing this in hopes to reduce the possibility of another explosion like the one in February 2015, which crippled its ability to manufacture gasoline. The explosion in February injured four, showered neighborhoods with debris, and sent gas prices soaring.
Federal and state regulators found that the blast was caused by broken equipment that ExxonMobil deliberately did not fix, with the knowledge that it could cause a life-threatening explosion. They also found that the blast almost caused a disastrous leak of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid that could have killed thousands.
The refinery can produce about 155,000 barrels of gasoline a day — about 10 percent of the total consumed in the entire state.
Read more in the Daily Breeze.