The Anacortes Refinery is a

petroleum refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petr ...

located about 70 miles north of Seattle on March Point (Puget Sound), just outside

Anacortes, Washington Anacortes ( ) is a city in Skagit County, Washington, United States. The name "Anacortes" is an adaptation of the name of Anne Curtis Bowman, who was the wife of early Fidalgo Island settler Amos Bowman.Marathon Petroleum Marathon Petroleum Corporation is an petroleum industry in the United States, American petroleum refining, marketing, and transportation company headquartered in Findlay, Ohio. The company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Marathon Oil until a cor ...

Production

The refinery receives crude feedstock via the

Trans Mountain pipeline The Trans Mountain Pipeline System, or simply the Trans Mountain Pipeline (TMPL), is a multiple product pipeline system which carries crude and refined products from Edmonton, Alberta, to the coast of British Columbia, Canada. The corporation ...

from Canada, by rail from North Dakota and the central U.S., and by tanker from Alaska and foreign sources.

Gasoline Gasoline ( North American English) or petrol ( Commonwealth English) is a petrochemical product characterized as a transparent, yellowish, and flammable liquid normally used as a fuel for spark-ignited internal combustion engines. When for ...

, jet and

diesel fuel Diesel fuel, also called diesel oil, heavy oil (historically) or simply diesel, is any liquid fuel specifically designed for use in a diesel engine, a type of internal combustion engine in which fuel ignition takes place without a spark as a re ...

are the primary products, which are supplied to end users predominantly in Washington,

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

and

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

. Other products include

heavy fuel oils Fuel oil is any of various fractional distillation, fractions obtained from the distillation of petroleum (crude oil). Such oils include distillates (the lighter fractions) and residue (chemistry), residues (the heavier fractions). Fuel oils inclu ...

liquefied petroleum gas Liquefied petroleum gas, also referred to as liquid petroleum gas (LPG or LP gas), is a fuel gas which contains a flammable mixture of hydrocarbon gases, specifically propane, Butane, ''n''-butane and isobutane. It can also contain some ...

, and

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

. Secondary processing facilities include a

fluid catalytic cracker In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that may continuously motion, move and Deformation (physics), deform (''flow'') under an applied shear stress, or external force. They have zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, are M ...

, an

alkylation Alkylation is a chemical reaction that entails transfer of an alkyl group. The alkyl group may be transferred as an alkyl carbocation, a free radical, a carbanion, or a carbene (or their equivalents). Alkylating agents are reagents for effecting al ...

unit,

hydrotreating Hydrodesulfurization (HDS), also called hydrotreatment or hydrotreating, is a catalytic chemical process widely used to remove sulfur (S) from natural gas and from refined petroleum products, such as gasoline or petrol, jet fuel, kerosene, ...

units and a naphtha reformer. Finished products are shipped through a third-party pipeline system that serves western Washington and Oregon.

Explosion

On April 2, 2010, an explosion at the Anacortes refinery killed seven workers when a heat exchanger failed during startup after a maintenance operation.

References

{{reflist Oil refineries in Washington 1955 establishments in Washington (state) Energy infrastructure completed in 1955 Buildings and structures in Skagit County, Washington Anacortes, Washington

Production

Explosion

See also

References