Marathon Petroleum Closes BP Texas City Refinery Deal

Marathon Petroleum on Friday closed its $2.4 billion acquisition of BP 's Texas City, Texas, refinery, both companies said.

Marathon also said that the 451,000 barrels-per-day plant, the site of a deadly explosion in 2005 that killed 15 people, will be renamed the Galveston Bay refinery. Marathon already owns an 80,000 bpd refinery in Texas City.

BP announced in early 2011 that it would sell the Texas City plant as well as its California refinery to focus its refining operations on plants in Indiana, Ohio and Washington State with access to cheap Canadian heavy crude.

In October, Marathon said it would buy the refinery -- which is about $589 million of the total price -- as well as inventory, three intrastate natural gas liquids pipelines, four terminals and other assets.

BP paid more than $3 billion to settle lawsuits, cover fine sand upgrade the refinery in the years after the blast.