Fire at California Refinery

A fire broke out after an explosion on Saturday at a California oil refinery that local residents had planned to protest against later in the day due to concerns over pollution and past accidents.

Firefighters in the city of Torrance, near Los Angeles, extinguished the blaze and there were no injuries, according to the plant owner and local police, Reuters reported.

The 151,300 barrel-per-day refinery is operated by PBF Energy and supplies around 10% of California’s gasoline. Two years ago, when the refinery was owned by Exxon Mobil Corp, a major blast halted gasoline production for more than a year.

A group of local residents organized as “South Bay Flare” had planned a march at the refinery on Saturday morning to mark the anniversary of that earlier mishap, according to the group’s Facebook page. The Torrance refinery had at least two outages in 2016 after a power outage at a local utility knocked the facility offline. In October, PBF received a violation notice from the California’s air regulator for excessive flaring following one of the outages.