At 12:51 this afternoon an explosion ripped through an operating unit at the Chalmette Refinery outside New Orleans. Large plume of smoke visible for miles across St. Bernard Parish. Windows rattled across the river in Algiers. Ceiling tiles fell in businesses near the gate. A restaurant packed with 60 people at lunch cleared out in seconds.

No injuries. Every hand on location accounted for.

What This Plant Actually Is

The Chalmette Refinery has been running on that same dirt since 1915. Over a hundred years of continuous operation on the banks of the Mississippi River. 400 acres. 185,000 barrels of crude processed every single day. Around 500 employees and another 500 contractors at the gate. One percent of everything America runs through a refinery every day goes through this plant.

Fire crews had it knocked down within ten minutes of getting on scene. The refinery's own emergency response team was already working before the parish units arrived. Fence-line monitoring confirmed no off-site air impacts. Parish President Louis Pomes told reporters the situation was well under control.

What the Timing Means

This is the second Louisiana refinery fire in eleven days. Shell Norco went down April 27th. Chalmette went down today.

The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for over two months. Brent crude is above $130. Diesel is above $5 a gallon nationally. U.S. gasoline inventories have dropped twelve straight weeks. The Gulf Coast is carrying extra load right now for the entire country because the Middle East is offline.

A University of Houston energy expert said it plainly — Chalmette running at full capacity is about one percent of U.S. daily crude consumption, and any unplanned outage right now combined with the global shortage will push gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices higher across the south and mid-south.

A crew of hands responded to a fire at a 110-year-old refinery on a Friday afternoon, contained it in ten minutes, and kept everyone alive.