The February 2015 explosion that shuttered the ExxonMobil plant in Torrance was the costliest disruption at a California refinery in the past 16 years, with motorists paying at least $2.4 billion in higher pump prices in the following six months, according to a recent RAND study.
Soaring prices stemming from the lost gasoline supply sucked a staggering $6.9 billion from the California economy in the first six months after the explosion alone.
But the total economic loss is likely more than double that figure, RAND researchers noted.
Fifteen months after the blast in a pollution-control device, ExxonMobil this weekend is scheduled to begin restarting the refinery, which normally produces 155,000 barrels of gasoline a day, or about 10 percent of the total refined product in California.
The economic losses tied to the Torrance blast were part of a larger RAND cost-benefit analysis of proposed California oil and gas refinery safety regulations.
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