Repairs to Fire-Damaged Martinez Refinery Expected to Extend into February
Return to full operations expected in March; plus, News You Can Use roundup of events and activities for first month of 2026
PBF Energy announced in a news release Friday that “rebuild activities” at its Martinez refinery that was heavily damaged by a massive fire on Feb. 1, 2025 are expected to extended into February, with a return to “planned operating rates” by the beginning of March.
PBF had initially hoped to return to the refinery to full production by the end of 2025. After being completely shuttered for several weeks following the Feb. 1 fire, the refinery has been operating at limited capacity since last spring, averaging 85,000 to 105,000 barrels per day, below its 157-000-barrel capacity, according to the company.
In the news release, PBF said that it has begun the “commissioning phase” of utility systems and certain idled equipment, and that a “phased restart of the refinery will progress as work is completed, and the quality assurance and control process is completed.”
PBF CEO Matt Lucey said in the release that “tremendous effort has gone into getting us to this point, weeks away from completing the project. Our employees rallied behind our facility, and are working tirelessly to safely finalize the repairs.”
Lucey also acknowledged the “support of our local community, Contra Costa County regulators and the Bay Area Air District, for their efforts in getting the Martinez refinery back to a position where we can more fully contribute to satisfying California’s demand for our products.”
The Feb. 1, 2015 fire at PBF Energy’s Martinez refinery
The news release also downplayed any financial hit to the company’s bottom line from the fire and resulting loss of production, noting that the costs of rebuilding damaged units and restoring the refinery to full operational status will “largely be covered by insurance, subject to the company’s deductible and retentions totaling $30 million.” It also said that business interruption insurance “will significantly offset the financial loss resulting from the downtime through the restart of the refinery.”
According to the news release, PBF is also planning to conduct a “turnaround” (refinery parlance for a major maintenance and upgrade project) of the Martinez refinery’s hydrocracker unit in the second quarter of the year. Last year’s fire occurred during a similar turnaround operation of the fluid catalytic cracker unit when two contractors mistakenly opened the wrong flange in preparation for maintenance work, allowing hydrocarbon liquid to leak, culminating in the massive fire that eventually led to a shelter-in-place advisory for the surrounding community.
Investigations into the cause of the fire have resulted in a degree of finger-pointing. While an independent investigation into the root cause of the fire commissioned by Contra Costa County Health Services pinned the primary responsibility for the fire on inadequate operations monitoring and control of contractors’ work by refinery management, the refinery in its own analysis said the “sole root cause of the incident was that the two contractor steamfitters opened the wrong flange…”, and pointed to inadequate training of the steamfitters by contractor management. PBF’s investigative team concluded that the two steamfitters employed by contractor TIMEC were shown the correct flange to open but still opened the incorrect one.
The experience and skills of the steamfitters also came under scrutiny during the investigations, particularly in the context of SB-54, a 2014 state law that was designed to improve refinery safety during turnaround projects by requiring contractor manpower to be sourced solely from local union halls and the training standards they oversaw. An initial draft of the independent report by consultant JEM Advisors, however, concluded that the law had the opposite effect, making it more difficult to find experienced craftspeople for refinery turnarounds. Representatives of the California State Building Construction and Trades Council (SBCTC), a powerful trades union lobbying group in Sacramento that supported SB 54 and donates heavily to the Democratic Party and its favored candidates, challenged the basis for this “contributing cause” conclusion and succeeded in getting it removed from the final report.
In a September presentation of the final independent report to the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors’ Industrial Safety Ordinance Ad Hoc Committee, Rex Kenyon of JEM said, “There were an awful lot of things that should have triggered the thought process on these fitters” to avoid opening the wrong flange.
The opening of the wrong flange occurred despite the presence of a “blind tag” that identified the location of the flange that was supposed to be opened. The task they were supposed to perform, Kenyon said, was “pretty basic for fitters that are journeymen.”
Kenyon’s JEM partner, Tom Hanson, added during the presentation that “I cannot explain why they opened a different flange,” but he also said the responsibility for preventing the accident ultimately fell on PBF. “The owner of the facility … must provide adequate oversight to make sure that incidents like this don’t happen,” he said.
The planned return of PBF’s refinery to full production comes as Valero plans to shutter its refinery across the Carquinez Strait in Benicia this spring. Another refinery in Southern California is also winding down operations. If Valero closes as expected this year, PBF’s Martinez refinery and Chevron’s Richmond facility will be the only remaining ones in the Bay Area refining oil into gasoline and other petroleum products (the Marathon facility outside Martinez and Phillips 66 in Rodeo have transitioned to processing renewable fuels).
The following News You Can Use roundup of events and activities in and around Martinez by freelance writer David Scholz and Craig Lazzeretti is made possible through the support of paid subscribers and other donors to the newsletter. It is being made available to paid subscribers only. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 per month or $50 annually if not already to support more local news coverage of Martinez.
