Tesoro to cut refinery
output; net income soars
SAN ANTONIO >> Tesoro Petroleum Corp., which owns the largest of Hawaii's two refinery and five other facilities in the western United States, plans to lower its fourth-quarter refinery operations by 2 percent from the prior quarter.
The company plans to process as much as 495,000 barrels of oil a day in the last three months of the year, down from the third-quarter average of 505,400, said spokeswoman Tara Payne.
The refinery in Kapolei, which has a capacity of 95,000 barrels a day, will process 80,000 barrels to 85,000 barrels a day this quarter, Payne said. It processed 80,400 barrels a day last quarter.
The San Antonio-based company has a total refining capacity of about 560,000 barrels a day.
Meanwhile, Tesoro, which operates 35 gas stations in Hawaii, said yesterday that surging fuel prices led to third-quarter profit of $70.6 million, compared with a loss a year earlier.
Net income for the company, whose shares have more than tripled in the past year, was $1.09 a share, compared with a loss $15.8 million, or 24 cents a share. Revenue rose 8.4 percent to $2.33 billion from $2.15 billion.
Higher prices for gasoline and other fuels outpaced the rising cost of crude oil, widening the gross profit margin on processing by 81 percent to $8.24 a barrel, Tesoro said. The increase offset a 7 percent drop in average daily product sales to 577,500 barrels.
The higher margins resulted from supply problems on the West Coast, according to the company.
