Flint Hills Resources LLC will begin to permanently halt operations in May at the North Pole refinery, Alaska ’s largest by capacity, citing poor economics and “enormous” costs for cleaning up soil and groundwater. The subsidiary of Koch Industries Inc. will take the extraction unit at the refinery near Fairbanks out of service on May 1, ending gasoline production, and shut the No. 2 crude unit by June 1, ceasing the output of jet fuel and all other refined products, the Wichita, Kansas-based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. It will continue to sell fuels at terminals in Anchorage and Fairbanks. The announcement follows the shutdown of the refinery’s No. 1 crude unit in early 2012 because of what Flint Hills described at the time as “challenging economics” and rising crude prices. Cleaning contaminated soil and groundwater has further compounded costs, the company said. “Our company has spent […]