Chevron Corp. (CVX) plans to run higher-sulfur Alaskan and Middle Eastern crudes when it completes work at Northern California’s largest refinery in 2016, not the Bakken oil helping spur the U.S. path to energy independence. Chevron’s 245,300-barrel-a-day Richmond refinery is seeking regulatory approval to replace a hydrogen plant and increase capacity at the fluid catalytic cracker’s hydrotreater and sulfur-recovery system. The upgrade will take about two years and could be done as soon as mid-2016 if city officials greenlight the project in June or July, Nicole Barber, a company spokeswoman, said in an interview at the plant yesterday. Richmond imports mostly light, sour crudes from Saudi Arabia , government data show. It will use the same sources after the work, Barber said. The U.S. supplied 86 percent of its own energy needs last year as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, unlocked supplies from shale formations such as […]