LITTLE ROCK — Murphy Oil: Refinery
restarted after fire
Murphy Oil Corp. said its Milford Haven refinery in Wales is operating normally after a fire that was caused by a power failure last week.
“The refinery is up and running,” Emma Murphy, a U.K.- based company spokesman, said Monday.
A disruption to the external power supply caused a total blackout at the site on July 20, “resulting in a fire within the refinery process units,” the company said in a prepared statement the next day, without specifying the plants affected.
“The refinery is now in the process of restarting which is likely to take another few days,” the Public Health Wales said in a statement Friday.
The 108,000-barrela-day refinery was shut down for maintenance earlier this year. Work included a capacity increase to about 130,000 barrels of oil a day.
Murphy Oil, based in El Dorado, said Thursday that it plans to exit the refining business to focus on production and retail networks in the United States. The Welsh refinery and two other plants in the United States will be put up for sale, it said.
Sustainable-growth group to meet Aug. 4
Business and economic development leaders, educators, philanthropists and investors from southeast Arkansas are being asked to attend a leadership group meeting on Aug. 4.
The Southeast Arkansas Sustainable Growth Initiative, a 14-county effort to revitalize and diversify the regional economy, is hosting the meeting at Southeast Arkansas College’s Seminar Room at McGeorge Hall.
It will be the second of five meetings about workforce and economic transformation.
The goal of the seminar is the development and adoption of a regional vision and plan.
To learn more, contact Bryan Barnhouse with The Economic Development Alliance of Jefferson County at (870) 535-0110.
Arkansas Index rises 2.33 to reach 180.92
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, rose 2.33 to 180.92 Monday.
Fourteen of the 17 stocks in the index gained ground.
Conway-based Home BancShares, which reported a 65 percent increase in second-quarter earnings last week, jumped 4.2 percent in heavy trading.
First Federal Bancshares in Harrison continued its decline, falling 6.3 percent on four times its normal volume.
Volume was 26.4 million shares, compared with average volume of 26.6 million shares.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business, Pages 19 on 07/27/2010