Two US East Coast refineries were closed or preparing to close because Hurricane Sandy was expected to make landfall near the New Jersey-Delaware border late Oct. 29, the US Department of Energy Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability reported.

Marathon Petroleum Corp. has signed a definitive agreement to buy BP PLC’s 451,000-b/cd Texas City, Tex., refinery and related assets for as much as $2.5 billion.

A fire at TNK-BP’s 130,000-b/d Saratov refinery in southwestern Russia burned four workers on Oct. 4, killing one. Injuries to the other three were not considered life-threatening.

A Sept. 28 boiler explosion at a Wynnewood, Okla., refinery owned by CVR Energy Inc. of Sugar Land, Tex., killed one worker and critically injured another, a spokeswoman with the US Department of Labor said Oct. 1, adding the incident is under investigation.

Stavrolen, a subsidiary of Lukoil, has resumed full production of ethylene and propylene at its complex in the Stavropol region of Russia after completing repairs to the ethylene unit, which was damaged by fire in mid-December 2011.

Italy’s Eni SPA will turn its 80,000-b/d Venice refinery at Porto Marghera, Italy, into a “biorefinery” based on proprietary technology for the production of biodiesel.

The US Environmental Protection Agency established the amount of biodiesel products to be included in US fuel markets during 2013 at 1.28 billion gal. EPA said it acted under provisions of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which established a second phase of the federal renewable fuels standards.

India’s government has taken the politically difficult step of raising the controlled price of diesel by 5 rupees/l. (about 9¢/l.). In New Delhi, the new price will be about 47 rupees/l.

Dutch refiner Zeeland Refinery NV has awarded an engineering, procurement, and construction contract to a unit of Foster Wheeler AG’s Global Engineering and Construction Group to upgrade the distillate hydrocracker at the Zeeland refinery at Vlissingen, the Netherlands.

Firefighters continued to battle flare-ups at tanks in the Amuay section of the 940,000-b/d Paraguana Refining Center in Venezuela Aug. 29, 4 days after a deadly explosion and fire. The death toll rose to 48.

Gunvor Group Ltd. has restarted the 100,000-b/d refinery in Ingolstadt, Germany, that it acquired from Petroplus Holdings AG earlier this year.

Firefighting extended into a third day at a storage area of the big Paraguana Refining Center in Venezuela after an Aug. 25 explosion and fire in the Amuay section that killed at least 41 people, according to press reports.

Caltex has decided to close its Kurnell refinery on Botany Bay, just south of Sydney, and convert the facility into a fuel import terminal at a cost of $680 million (Aus.).

A once-doomed 330,000-b/d refinery in Philadelphia will remain in service and receive an upgrade helped financially by the government of Pennsylvania.