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Cherry Point Refinery

1971 establishments in Washington (state)BP buildings and structuresBuildings and structures in Whatcom County, WashingtonEnergy infrastructure completed in 1971Energy infrastructure in Washington (state)
Oil refineries in WashingtonUse mdy dates from October 2018

The Cherry Point Refinery is an oil refinery near Bellingham, Washington, north of Seattle in the United States. Owned by BP, is the largest refinery in Washington state (and was the 30th largest in the U.S. in 2015). It is located about seven miles (11 km) south of Blaine and eight miles (13 km) northwest of Ferndale, a few miles south of the Canada–US border, on the Strait of Georgia between Birch Bay and Lummi Bay. Completed in 1971, its design and construction was overseen by George W. Glade, CEO and President of Parsons Constructors, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ralph M. Parsons Company. It is the fourth largest refinery on the West Coast, and one of the last major oil refineries built in the United States. The Cherry Point refinery supplies about 20% of the gasoline in Washington state.Originally an Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) facility, the refinery became a BP operation 22 years ago in January 2002, following BP's April 2000 purchase of ARCO. The refinery was initially planned to be built closer to Seattle, at Kayak Point, northwest of Everett, but Atlantic Richfield abandoned those plans in October 1968 and built the facility at Cherry Point. When first operational, Cherry Point had a capacity of about 100,000 barrels (16,000 m3); it currently processes over 225,000 barrels (35,800 m3) of petroleum (crude oil) per day, with 90% becoming gasoline, diesel or jet fuel. It covers about 3,300 acres (5.2 sq mi; 13 km2).Most of Cherry Point's crude oil is from the Alaska North Slope. It is brought in by petroleum tankers via the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Rosario Strait and delivered directly to the refinery via the facility's tanker pier near a minor headland called Cherry Point, on the Strait of Georgia. The refinery received the first oil through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, transported aboard the ARCO Juneau, in early August 1977. The remainder of the crude comes from a pipeline connected to reserves in Western Canada. In January 2014 the refinery finished construction of a rail facility to import Bakken crude from North Dakota.The gasoline and diesel are primarily shipped to filling stations in Washington and Oregon via the Olympic Pipeline and over-the-road fuel trucks. Jet fuel from Cherry Point Refinery accounts for 85% of the fuel used by the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Significant quantities of calcined coke are also produced and shipped to the nearby ALCOA aluminium smelter. A fire in February 2012 caused the plant to be shut down for several weeks.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Cherry Point Refinery (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Cherry Point Refinery
Brown Road,

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N 48.885 ° E -122.738 °
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Brown Road

Brown Road
98230
Washington, United States
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Ferndale Refinery

The Ferndale Refinery is an oil refinery near Ferndale, Washington, United States, that is owned by Phillips 66. It is located in the Cherry Point Industrial Zone west of Ferndale and had a capacity of 101,000 barrels per day in 2015, 64th largest in the nation. The Ferndale Refinery produces predominantly transportation fuels consumed in local markets and also includes secondary processing facilities such as a fluid catalytic cracker, an alkylation unit, hydotreating units, and a naphtha reformer. The plant follows a 10-5-3-2 crack spread, meaning that for ten barrels of crude feedstock, the refinery produces five barrels of gasoline, three barrels of distillate, and two barrels of fuel oil. About one hundred miles (160 km) north of Seattle, the Ferndale Refinery was the first of five refineries in Washington. Built by General Petroleum Corp in 1954, its original capacity was rated at 35,000 barrels per stream day. General Petroleum was a subsidiary of Socony (Standard Oil Company of New York) and was integrated into Mobil Chemical Co when the company formed in 1960. BP took control of the refinery in 1988 when its wholly owned subsidiary Sohio received the plant from Mobil Oil in exchange for $152.5 million and crude oil inventories.In 1993, Tosco Corp, a California-based downstream and marketing corporation, bought the refinery from BP. The deal included BP’s retail stations and marketing assets across Washington and Oregon.Phillips Petroleum Company purchased Tosco for $7 billion in February 2001, and assumed control of the refinery thereafter. With the deal’s close, Phillips became the second largest refiner in the U.S. and obtained refineries on both coasts. Even after the Tosco purchase, Phillips sought further expansion. Phillips and Conoco announced a merger in November 2001, forming ConocoPhillips, the new controlling entity of the Ferndale Refinery. This new supermajor boasted the nation's largest downstream system (as of 2001). In 2012 ConocoPhillips spun off its downstream and midstream assets as a new independent energy company, Phillips 66, which still operates the Ferndale Refinery. ConocoPhillips became the second company to abandon the vertically integrated model, following Marathon Oil Corporation’s decision to spin off its downstream assets in 2011. The Ferndale refinery receives a portion of its crude oil from the Amazon River Basin of South America, a concern of many environmentalists. In 2015, it was refining 989 barrels per day of oil from the Amazon.