Exxon Has Unplanned Flaring at Rotterdam Refinery

Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) said unplanned flaring occurred in its Rotterdam refinery on Thursday morning and was put out with no risk to public health and the environment, while a trader said it had a negligible effect on the market.

"We did have some technical problems; we couldn't bring enough steam to the flare," an Exxon spokeswoman in the Netherlands told Reuters.

"It lasted for about 90 minutes."

The incident did not appear to have a lasting impact on European product markets. "In the early morning people were getting excited about an impact, but I think it was solved quickly," said a distillates trader.

European markets have come under recent pressure due to an outage at California's second-largest refinery. High volumes of Asian exports have headed to the United States and reduced the number of cargoes available for export to Europe.