Refinery

The Maryland Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Domino Sugar $4,000 for allowing sugar dust to accumulate in its refinery, which is believed to have caused an explosion last year at the Key Highway plant in South Baltimore, according to a state report. The Nov. 2 explosion echoed across the harbor, and authorities said they suspected sugar dust might have ignited. Three employees suffered minor injuries, several pieces of equipment were destroyed and dozens of windows were shattered in the blast.

Eyeing the Royal Farms sign advertising a gallon of premium gas for $3.99, Taryn Gross-Ojekwe's jaw fell open. "When it is going to cease?" she said of the price, which has climbed steadily over the past few weeks. "Just within the last few days, it was $3.79. " As a freelance upholsterer, the Baltimore resident doesn't have a big enough income to brush off a quarter increase per gallon. The Nissan Sentra she parked at the pump on Russell Street on Monday afternoon now consumes about $60 at each fill-up.

Some of the nation's biggest oil companies are looking at permanently reducing how much gasoline and diesel fuel they make, a move that analysts say would almost certainly trigger higher prices for drivers. Energy companies are suffering huge losses from refining because of slumping gasoline use - a product of the economic downturn and changing consumer habits and preferences. Energy experts say refining cutbacks have begun and will accelerate as corporations strive for profits.

The largest load of sugar ever delivered to Domino Sugar's Baltimore refinery arrives aboard a ship on Monday. The Domino Sugars refinery will make history Monday morning when it is scheduled to receive the largest single raw sugar shipment ever to a port east of the Mississippi River, the company announced. More than 95 million pounds of raw sugar from Guatemala will be unloaded from the 623-foot bulk carrier Simon Schulte, more than 100 feet longer than the cargo ships that usually deliver sugar to the refinery.

MEXICO CITY -- In a dramatic move to combat this city's deepening air pollution crisis, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari ordered yesterday the immediate closing of the city's largest government-operated oil refinery.The decision to close the March 18 Refinery, which sprawls over 430 acres in the north of the city, will cost an estimated $500 million and will reduce the country's crude-oil refining capacity by more than 100,000 barrels a day.In addition, oil industry officials said it will force Mexico to import some kinds of gasoline until new refining capacity can be built.

Crown Central Petroleum Corp. has reached a tentative agreement with union workers at its Pasadena, Texas, oil refinery, potentially ending a 4 1/2 -year lockout punctuated by numerous lawsuits and countersuits filed by both sides in the dispute. In a joint statement released yesterday, the union and Baltimore-based company said they have agreed to resolve all pending litigation, which stemmed in part from the company's claim that workers tried to sabotage the plant after negotiations failed in 1996.

Crown Central Petroleum Corp., blaming its $5.9 million plunge into the red during the first quarter of the year on repair costs associated with a Houston refinery, should be back in the black by the middle of the year, its chairman says.Crown, which survived the Persian Gulf crisis better than many expected, was caught in an unexpectedly long renovation of its largest gasoline production unit. The two-month outage reduced gasoline production during the first quarter by 35 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.

Crown Central Petroleum Corp. said yesterday that it is reducing output at its two Texas refineries because of low oil and gasoline prices.Baltimore-based Crown said it has trimmed crude-oil processing by 10 percent at its Tyler, Texas, plant, which can process 52,000 barrels of oil per day.And it said its Pasadena, Texas, refinery, the site of a long and costly union lockout, would continue processing 70,000 barrels a day -- 30 percent below its capacity of...

A tentative ruling by a Texas environmental commission would force Crown Central Petroleum Corp. to install a $300,000 device to help stop sulfur emissions at one of its refineries in Texas -- an order readily accepted by the company but deemed insufficient by environmental groups and health officials who say Crown should install a more effective unit that would cost more than $20 million.The move comes nearly a year after the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission fined Crown just over $1 million -- the largest air pollution fine ever issued by Texas -- for continued violations between 1993 and 1998 that included excessive hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide emissions at its Pasadena refinery.

Shattered windows of the Domino Sugar plant looked out over South Baltimore last night after an explosion, so powerful that it shook buildings across the Inner Harbor, forced the refinery's evacuation and closure - possibly for days. Fire officials said the blast did not appear to have done any significant damage to structures at the plant, an integral part of the city skyline for 85 years. The explosion and fires, on the sixth and ninth floors of a building where sugar is refined and packaged, were confined to a dust collection system, officials said.

Emergency operations officials in Harford County said persistent calls received about gas odors from numerous locations in the county early Friday morning appear to be related to fumes from an oil refinery in New Jersey. No sources of gas were found in the county, but local fire companies were busy throughout Friday morning and into the early afternoon responding to calls of gas odors or suspected gas leaks. Harford Emergency Operations spokesman Rick Ayers said early Friday morning the county was informed by state emergency operations officials that fumes from an industrial facility in New Jersey had been detected in the air in Harford and Cecil counties and in New Castle County, Del. In a later statement, the county government said the fumes were from an oil refinery in Paulsboro, N.J., which is on the New Jersey shore of the Delaware River and across the river from Philadelphia International Airport.

Jeffrey Irl Cohen, a human resources executive for nearly 40 years, who helped advance opportunities for women in manufacturing in the early 1970s, died of bladder cancer April 25 at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. He was 61 and lived in Owings Mills. Raised in Woodlawn, Mr. Cohen attended Woodlawn Senior High School, where he met his future wife of 39 years, the former Rochelle Caplan. He was a 1967 graduate. He received his bachelor's degree in 1971 from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Highway 23 meanders south of New Orleans toward the Gulf of Mexico through towns with names that conjure the area's rich history — Pointe a la Hache, Magnolia, Home Place. The road winds past old plantation mansions, squat homes with boats parked on the lawn, marshes dotted with twisting cypress trees and orange lilies — and massive oil refinery plants. This stretch of highway, surrounded by a feathery network of bayous and swamp lands, is the southernmost portion of The Great River Road, which follows the Mississippi River from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Some of the nation's biggest oil companies are looking at permanently reducing how much gasoline and diesel fuel they make, a move that analysts say would almost certainly trigger higher prices for drivers. Energy companies are suffering huge losses from refining because of slumping gasoline use - a product of the economic downturn and changing consumer habits and preferences. Energy experts say refining cutbacks have begun and will accelerate as corporations strive for profits.

The Maryland Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Domino Sugar $4,000 for allowing sugar dust to accumulate in its refinery, which is believed to have caused an explosion last year at the Key Highway plant in South Baltimore, according to a state report. The Nov. 2 explosion echoed across the harbor, and authorities said they suspected sugar dust might have ignited. Three employees suffered minor injuries, several pieces of equipment were destroyed and dozens of windows were shattered in the blast.

Pushing gentrification of Canton's industrial waterfront farther east, developer Edwin F. Hale is planning a "Main Street"-style shopping center on a former oil refinery site that would likely be anchored by Target and grocer Harris Teeter and more than double the size of his Canton Crossing mixed-use development. Hale Properties LLC has a contract to buy 31 acres adjacent to the development from Exxon Mobil Corp. for the retail center, said Hale, owner of the waterfront development at Boston and Clinton streets being built around a 17-story office tower.

The Domino Sugars sign that blazes in red neon from a Brooklyn, N.Y., sugar plant - as much an icon as a similar sign on Baltimore's waterfront - could soon go dark when the refinery on New York's East River shuts down. But plans to stop refining sugar in Brooklyn by February will actually benefit the Domino plant in Baltimore, a company official said yesterday. The plant in Locust Point is expected to pick up most of the production work now being done at the Brooklyn refinery, said Jack Lay, president and chief executive of American Sugar Refinery Inc., which owns the plants and markets sugar products under the Domino brand.

FOR 50 YEARS, the 120-by-70-foot "Domino Sugars" sign has been an icon that has defined Baltimore. When you see its 650 neon tubes aglow over South Baltimore, you know you're home, hon. The Domino plant, which employs about 500 people on a 20-acre site, is the last reminder that Baltimore once had a dozen refineries processing imported sugar cane. This relic's future is now being determined in board rooms in London and Florida, where the sale of the whole Domino operation is being negotiated.

BAIJI, Iraq -- The Baiji refinery may be the most important industrial site in the Sunni Arab-dominated regions of Iraq. On a good day, 500 tanker trucks will leave the refinery filled with fuel with a street value of $10 million. The sea of oil under Iraq is supposed to rebuild the nation and then make it prosper. But at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq's largest refinery is diverted to the black market, according to U.S. military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated - and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.