ExxonMobil Joliet Refinery Floods and Stays Offline as Midwest Diesel Hits Records

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Clark Savage

Energy News Beat — September 18, 2026

One of the Midwest’s most important diesel and gasoline plants is still dark. ExxonMobil’s Joliet refinery in unincorporated Channahon Township, Illinois — about 40 miles southwest of Chicago — remains offline after a Sunday power outage and a subsequent flood that overwhelmed a pump. ZeroHedge flagged the outage overnight as “one of the largest diesel refineries in the Midwest” going offline.

The timing matters. U.S. diesel is already at all-time highs, global distillate markets are tight, and this plant is a pipeline supplier into Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

What happened

Around 3:30 p.m. CT on Sunday, September 13, the plant lost power on ComEd’s primary and secondary feeders. The outage lasted roughly 3½ hours. Power came back around 7 p.m., but the loss tripped safety flares and forced a plant-wide shutdown.

Exxon later said it had identified the outage on ComEd’s lines and that electricity to the site was fully restored. The company has not said whether the later flood problem was connected to that outage.

On Thursday, September 17, a regulatory filing reported that floodwater had overwhelmed a pump. A containment boom was deployed as part of cleanup. Wood Mackenzie still listed the refinery as offline Thursday. GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan reported another flare event Wednesday — a sign the restart was not complete.

IIR Energy had expected a return to normal service by the end of this week. That clock is now running against the flood-related pump work and whatever safety checks follow a hard trip. Exxon has not issued a public restart date or a dollar damage figure.

Damage and estimates

  • There is no official dollar estimate for equipment damage as of Friday morning. What is confirmed:A total plant shutdown after the Sunday power loss.
  • Floodwater overwhelming at least one pump.
  • A containment boom on site for cleanup.
  • Renewed flaring midweek.
  • Assessments still underway.

This does not look like a destroyed refinery. It does look like a hard trip plus water damage to pumping equipment — the kind of problem that can stretch a restart from “days” into a longer unit-by-unit sequence if motors, electrical gear, or process pumps were submerged. De Haan said a restart “may take several days” and that “safety and damage assessments… have to be done.”

Until Exxon or regulators publish more, treat any dollar figure circulating on social media as speculation.

How much the plant processes in 2026

ExxonMobil’s 2026 Joliet Facility Profile lists:

Item
2026 figure
Crude capacity
275,000 barrels per day
Share of Midwest refining capacity
About 6%
Gasoline + diesel output
About 11 million gallons per day
Equivalent fill-ups
About 550,000 cars and semi-trucks per day
Site
1,400 acres, Channahon Township, Will County
Workforce
About 580 employees plus contractors
Other products
LPG, asphalt, sulfur, petroleum coke

Exxon’s year-end 2025 SEC capacity table shows Joliet at 267,000 bpd. The company’s public 2026 fact sheet and website still use 275,000 bpd. Both numbers describe the same plant; 275,000 bpd is the figure Exxon is using operationally this year.

At 11 million gallons a day of gasoline and diesel, each full day offline is a large hole in PADD 2 product supply. CBS Chicago put the plant at roughly 10% of Chicago-area fuel supply.

Gasoline and diesel leave by pipeline to Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Asphalt and petcoke move by truck, barge, and rail to Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri. The plant was built in 1972 to run Canadian crude arriving by pipeline.

Who gets hit

The first impact is the Midwest / Great Lakes — EIA PADD 2 — not the Gulf Coast or California. Trucking, agriculture, construction, and retail diesel stations in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and neighboring states feel it first. Pennsylvania is on the pipeline list, so some barrels can move east, but this is a heartland problem.

That is why diesel in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio is moving faster than diesel on the Gulf Coast. The national market was already tight from Middle East disruption and Ukrainian strikes on Russian refining. Joliet removes a large inland source at a moment when utilization was already high, and inventories had little slack.

What analysts are saying about diesel prices — by area

National snapshot (Sept. 17, 2026)AAA’s national averages as of September 17: regular gasoline $4.439, diesel $6.396. Diesel is a new record on AAA’s series. Gasolytics, using the same AAA feed, put the national diesel average near $6.40, up about 42 cents on the week. EIA’s weekly on-highway survey for the week of September 14 had already printed $6.285 nationally and $6.250 in the Midwest.

Great Lakes / Midwest (the Joliet footprint)

AAA state diesel averages as of September 17:

State
Diesel ($/gal)
Notes
Michigan
$6.54
New AAA record; +62¢ week on Gasolytics
Indiana
$6.43
Pipeline customer
Illinois
$6.41
Plant state; +15¢ overnight Sept. 16–17 per local AAA readout
Ohio
$6.48
+57¢ week
Wisconsin
$6.19
Lower state tax; less extreme
Minnesota
$6.24
Nearby PADD 2
Iowa
$6.17
Pipeline customer
Pennsylvania
$6.51
On Joliet distribution list

Illinois diesel jumped from about $6.26 on Wednesday to $6.41 on Thursday, according to The Center Square / AAA. Michigan’s AAA page lists $6.5405 as the highest recorded state diesel average, dated September 17, 2026.

Other U.S. regions (for comparison)
Gulf Coast remains the cheapest major region: Oklahoma $5.94, Texas $5.96, Louisiana $5.99. EIA’s week-of-Sept. 14 Gulf Coast average was $6.027. West Coast is a different market: California $8.35, Washington $7.36, Oregon $6.78, Hawaii $7.09. Those West Coast numbers are not Joliet’s doing; they reflect a separate PADD 5 system already short on distillate.

AnalystsPatrick De Haan, GasBuddy: Great Lakes stations in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois could approach $7 a gallon “in the next week or so.” Wisconsin is less likely to get there because of lower fuel taxes. He called the Sunday power loss relatively rare and “a utility issue,” then warned the national diesel average could push through the inflation-adjusted 2022 peak. On September 16 he said the U.S. average had reached about $6.30 and could hit $6.60 within days. He has also said 2026 is on track to be the most expensive year for U.S. diesel on record.

Tom Kloza, chief energy advisor at Gulf Oil: diesel had already broken records near $6.33 before the Joliet flood filing, about 50 cents above the prior record. He argued prices can keep rising over the next 100 days, that the world has lost on the order of 7 million bpd of refining capacity (mostly Russia and the Persian Gulf), and that $3 diesel is gone for at least 15–16 months. Winter heating-oil demand in the Northeast will compete for the same distillate barrel.

Sam Ori, University of Chicago energy analyst: the U.S. is operating with “so little margin for error” that a Joliet-sized outage has an “outsized impact until that refinery comes back online.” He said it is unlikely prices ease quickly. CBS Chicago quoted him noting national diesel already above $6.20 at the time of that interview.

UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo has pointed to U.S. refiners running at multiyear-high rates to capture strong diesel cracks, while global disruptions still keep the market tight. Crack spreads earlier this month briefly topped $100 per barrel on the Gulf Coast.

The freight angle is straightforward. Diesel is the fuel of trucking, rail switching, farm equipment, and construction. Every extra 50 cents a gallon at these volumes shows up in food, freight surcharges, and industrial costs across the Midwest first.

Outlook

Two clocks are running.

  1. Plant clock. Power is back. The open questions are the flooded pump, any water-damaged electrical gear, and how fast Exxon can restart units without another flare event. IIR’s “end of this week” case is the optimistic path. A longer outage would keep 275,000 bpd and ~11 million gallons a day of gasoline and diesel off the Midwest map.
  2. Price clock. Retail diesel lags wholesale. Even if Joliet lights back up this weekend, pump prices in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio can keep rising for several days. De Haan’s $7 station-level call for the Great Lakes is the risk case if the restart slips and distillate stocks stay tight into heating season.

Exxon has not published a damage cost, a barrel-loss estimate, or a firm start-up date. Until it does, the market will treat Joliet as offline Midwest capacity in a diesel market that was already making new highs.

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Appendix: Sources and links

Outage, flood, and plant status

Capacity and 2026 throughput

Analyst comments and regional diesel prices

Note: ExxonMobil had not published a dollar damage estimate or a firm restart date as of early Friday, September 18, 2026. Capacity and product figures above are from company 2026 materials; retail prices are AAA/EIA prints that move daily.

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