Mandan’s Tesoro refinery has been expanding.
It just finished adding 10,000 barrels per day of gasoline refining capacity – bringing that to 60,000 barrels a day. And next year, the refinery will add another 5000 barrels to its diesel fuel refining capacity.
"As you know, the diesel demand in North Dakota continues to increase," said refinery manager John Berger. "That will give us a little more flexibility to allow us to shift gasoline or diesel production, based on where the market needs are. And of course, right now those needs a primarily around diesel fuels."
Berger says the plan is to have it on-line by next summer. He says there will be a short outage during construction – but he doesn’t expect any major disruptions in diesel supply.
"Whenever we have outages, we plan inventory and try to minimize impact," said Berger. "Certainly, we have to meet our contractual needs. But this will not be an extensive outage, and definitely will not be a full plant outage."
Berger said the last full plant outage happened in 2010.
Tesoro is investing $70 million on the two projects.