By The Associated Press
BLAINE — The BP Cherry Point refinery near Blaine is back in business.
BP spokesman Scott Dean in Chicago said today that repairs and maintenance were completed in May and normal operations have resumed.
The three-month outage had been mentioned as one reason gasoline prices have been higher on the West Coast than the rest of the nation.
But there are multiple factors that go into the price of gasoline, including increased demand for summer driving.
The refinery was hit by a fire Feb. 17 and the company decided to move up scheduled maintenance during the outage.
BP Cherry Point is the third-largest refinery on the West Coast. It produces 20 percent of Washington’s gasoline needs and supplies the majority of jet fuel for Sea-Tac, Portland and Vancouver, B.C., airports.
