(Updates status of fire, no impact to refinery operations,updates diesel prices, adds additional details)
By Liz Hampton and Erwin Seba
HOUSTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A fire at Motiva EnterprisesLLC's refinery in Louisiana on Thursday around midday forcedworkers to evacuate, local officials said, causing a keydistillation unit to shut and boosting prices of oil products.
Motiva's 235,000 barrel-per-day Convent, Louisiana, plantwas evacuated on Thursday after a fire broke out, according toSt. James Parish Sheriff Willy Martin Jr. By Thursday afternoon,the fire was still burning, although it was now under control,he said.
Company officials, speaking at a press briefing, said theywere investigating the cause of the fire and that it was beingcontained.
Two sources familiar with the refinery said the blazestarted in the 45,000 bpd heavy oil hydrocracker unit, alsoknown as the H-Oil Unit. All other units at the refinery arestill running, according to company officials.
It is unclear what caused the fire or how long it would taketo repair any damage. If the fire damaged the reactors, thatcould take months to fix, a third source said.
Motiva spokeswoman Angela Goodwin said refinery firefighterswere battling the blaze with assistance from nearby communityfire departments. She later said that air monitoring confirms"there is no impact to the community."
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Chemical Safety Board said theagency is following up on the incident.
Highways and roads near the refinery were shut for a time onThursday, St. James Parish officials said, but have nowreopened.
U.S. oil product futures prices rallied, with ultra-lowsulphur diesel futures gaining 4.8 percent on the day.Gasoline futures rose 4.4 percent on the day. The dieselcrack spread <1HOc1-CLc1>, a measure of refiner margins, alsorose, gaining more than 7 percent.
Mars Sour
In addition to halting production of diesel from therefinery, the fire further disrupts an already delayed projectby Motiva to combine the Convent refinery with the Motivarefinery in Norco, Louisiana, located 50 miles (80 km) away.That plan had been pushed back nine months for completion beforethe blaze.
The H-Oil Unit was scheduled to be revamped to diversify thefeeds it could process by February 2017. That was to take placeahead of plans to idle the refinery's 92,000 bpdgasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracking unit around June2017, along with plans to build a pipeline between the tworefineries.
Motiva is scheduled to divide its three refineries - whichhave a total daily refining capacity of more than 1 millionbarrels of crude - between co-owners Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Saudi Aramco as early as October.
Saudi Aramco will keep the nation's largest refinery, the603,000 bpd plant in Port Arthur, Texas, while Shell wouldcontrol this plant. How the fire will affect those talks wasunknown on Thursday. A call to Shell was not immediatelyreturned.
A hydrocracker distills heavier oil into distillates, suchas diesel and gasoline. (Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in New York and Liz Hampton andErwin Seba in Houston; additional reporting by JessicaResnick-Ault; Writing by Catherine Ngai; Editing by ChizuNomiyama and Alan Crosby)
