Under Wildfire Threat, Utilities Cut Power in Northern, Central California, an Industrial Info Market Brief

With the aim to curb wildfire risks amid high winds, California utilities PG&E and Southern California Edison have shut off power to hundreds of thousands of customers in northern, central and coastal areas of California. The outages began Wednesday morning and are expected to last through Thursday. While the utilities have not said how many customers will be affected, estimates hover around 800,000 or more. PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after California courts found the company's faulty equipment responsible for starting some of last year's deadly wildfires in the state, including the Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed thousands of homes and buildings. According to research done by IIR Energy, area refineries, including Marathon's Martinez Refinery and Phillips 66's Rodeo Refinery, both in the Bay Area, will be unaffected by the outages.