Tesoro

Units of Tesoro Corp. and EP Energy Corp. on Thursday formed a drilling joint venture (JV) to fund oil and natural gas development in EP’s Altamont program in the Uinta Basin of Utah.

Acting Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Patrick McDonnell plans to hit the road in April for a listening tour about how the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) can be improved. McDonnell will host nine roundtables with residents and leaders across the state to see how they can get more involved in DEP’s decision-making process. The OEJ serves as a point of contact for Pennsylvanians in low income areas and areas with more minorities. It was established more than a decade ago to better protect those communities from industrial development such as oil and gas drilling. OEJ Director Carl Jones said his office wants to go beyond those demographics, however, and start reaching out to include more communities in the public participation process. The agency’s oil and gas permitting has slowed in recent years as DEP has faced staff cuts, technical deficiencies and, at times, more applications. A schedule of the roundtables is available on DEP’s website.

Tesoro Corp. plans to integrate its two major Southern California refineries are stirring debate about what the proposed $460 million project means to longstanding efforts to curb air pollution throughout the Los Angeles Basin.

The clean-up by Tesoro Corp. of a nearly 21,000-bbl oil pipeline leak in North Dakota in 2013 will continue into next year, a state health department official said Wednesday.

As its joint senior management had predicted, Tesoro Corp.’s master limited partnership (MLP), Tesoro Logistics LP (TLLP), went on a buying spree Monday, scooping up $700 million in assets in North Dakota and another $400 million in Northern California.

Two Texas companies, San Antonio-based Tesoro Corp. and El Paso-based Western Refining Inc., said Thursday that Tesoro is acquiring Western in a stock transaction valued at $6.4 billion. Given timely approvals, the acquisition is expected to be completed in the first half of next year.

The two sides of San Antonio, TX-based Tesoro Corp. and its midstream unit, Tesoro Logistics (TLP), showed different faces of the low commodity price environment in 2Q2016, but CEO Greg Goff said there are opportunities for both companies.

A unit of San Antonio, TX-based Tesoro Corp. on Tuesday acquired the Dakota Prairie Refinery in the Bakken Shale play in North Dakota from a unit of Bismarck-based MDU Resources Group. The new refinery opened last year and was losing money for MDU.

Although the low price commodity environment is causing delays in some of its major capital investment projects, Tesoro Corp. likes the economics for its crude by rail option for shipping Bakken Shale supplies to its West Coast refineries, CEO Greg Goff said Thursday on an earnings conference call.