Fire At Refinery Near Billings Under Investigation

The cause of an explosion and fire at an ExxonMobil refinery in southern Montana is under investigation, company officials said Sunday.

The fire began at about 10 p.m. Saturday (March 26th) at a refinery in Lockwood, a suburb of Billings.

It was extinguished at about 1:15 a.m. Sunday.

A refinery spokes-person says there were no injuries and all employees and contractors were accounted for.

It isn’t clear how much damage was done and ExxonMobil officials didn’t respond to questions about how the fire might affect production.

The plant can refine up to 2.5 million gallons (9.4 million liters) of crude oil per day and produces about 600 million gallons (2.3 billion liters) of gasoline and diesel fuel each year.

Other products include asphalt, butane and propane.

The refinery’s emergency response team fought the fire along with crews from Lockwood, Billings and other area refineries, Yellowstone County officials said.