UPDATE: Plant Fire Causes 95% Closure

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Occidental Petroleum Corp. was forced to shut down most of its Elk Hills gas field in Kern County after a natural gas explosion Tuesday afternoon, officials said.


The fire, which started at about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, was still burning Wednesday morning, Kern County Fire Department spokesman Capt. Benny Wofford told Bloomberg News.


Latest reports say about 95 percent of the wells at the facility, which is California’s largest, were shut down. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles-based oil company said she didn’t know how much of the field’s production of the equivalent of 120,000 barrels of oil per day would be halted or what affect the shutdown will have on the state’s natural gas market, Bloomberg said.


Shares in Oxy closed down 2 cents to $46.63 and dropped another cent in after-hours trading Wednesday.

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