NEW YORK, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Independent U.S. oil refiner Clark USA said on Monday a small weekend fire idled a vacuum unit at its 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) Blue Island, Illinois, refinery.

"There was a small fire in the vacuum unit on Saturday evening. The unit is down and we are assessing the damage and how it will affect operations," spokeswoman Suzanne Miller told Reuters by telephone.

"The fire itself was small and was out within minutes," Miller added.

Traders earlier said that the crude unit at the Blue Island refinery was shut down by a weekend fire. One trader covering the U.S. Midwest said that Clark was looking for feedstocks like naphtha on the spot markets.

Clark had downed some units at the Blue Island refinery in late December after a small fire in a liquefied petroleum gases line.

St. Louis-based Clark is among the top independent oil refiners and marketers in the U.S., owned by affiliates of privately-held Wall Street investors The Blackstone Group (80 percent), and Occidental Petroleum Corp. (19 percent).

14:50 01-31-00

-- (cashtradr@aol.com), January 31, 2000

Answers

February Heating oil up 7% at the moment (3:10pm EST) and Natural Gas up 4.5%.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), January 31, 2000.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/ 000131/3n.html

Monday January 31, 3:02 pm Eastern Time

NYMEX Feb heatoil hits $1.00/gal, new 9-yr high

NEW YORK, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Heating oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) struck a fresh nine-year high of $1.00 a gallon amid a supply squeeze, just after another snowstorm swept the eastern United States, traders said.

The last time NYMEX heating oil futures traded higher was in December 1990, when they shot up to $1.10 a gallon in a the market run-up after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August that year.

``There's a supply squeeze going on,'' said trader and analyst Tom Bentz at Paribas Futures Inc. in New York.

``There has been no change in the situation from last week,'' he added.

Forecasts of above-normal temperatures in the U.S. Northeast for this week and the wind-down of positions on the NYMEX heating oil for February delivery, which expires at the end of the day's trade, have failed to dampen prices on heating oil futures, other traders said.

Reflecting the tightness in heating oil supplies, retail prices of the product in New England jumped 53.9 cents a gallon to an average of 172.1 cents a gallon -- more than 45 percent -- for the week ended January 24 compared with prices the week before, the U.S. Energy Information Admnistration said Monday.

Last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said distillate inventories nationwide fell by a huge 8.3 million barrels to 114.7 million barrels, some 35.9 million barrels lower than they were a year ago.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), January 31, 2000.

Can't you see the concerted,collective Effort with these "Refinery Problems"?Reminds me of Bloomberg Anouncements made,some Time ago, over the TV Media to the Gas Dealers,who would watch on certain Days of the Month to hear if they should jack up the Fuel Price the next Morning.Worked like a Charm,sure enough the Gas Prices the next Morning were up.

-- Otto (out@gas.can), January 31, 2000.