Thursday March 23, 1:37 pm Eastern Time

Tosco says extinguished small fire at Tosco refinery

LOS ANGELES, March 23 (Reuters) - Refinery Tosco Corp. (NYSE:TOS - news) said on Thursday it had a small fire in a gasoline-making unit at its Avon, Calif., refinery at noon on Wednesday that it quickly extinguished.

``The area where the fire occurred has been isolated. We have to finish the inspection and investigation,'' refinery spokesman Jeff Lyon said.

He declined to say which gasoline-making unit was affected and whether operations or production were disrupted, but said the fire occurred in a ``very small area'' in the unit.

Tosco had not yet determined the cause of the fire, Lyon said.

An explosion and fire at the Avon refinery on Feb. 23, 1999 killed four employees and severely injured another.

The San Francisco-area Avon-Rodeo refining complex has the capacity to process 156,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil.

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-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), March 24, 2000