By William Morris, Owatonna People’s Press

OWATONNA — A month-long decline in gas prices came to a jarring halt Thursday as prices spiked an average of 14 cents per gallon across Minnesota.

To blame is an unexpected refinery shutdown in Indiana, Gasbuddy.com Senior Petroleum Analyst Gregg Laskoski said. The BP Whiting Refinery announced this week that a crude distillation unit that handles more than half of the refinery’s production has been taken offline for “unscheduled repair work.”

“It was a total surprise,” Laskoski said. “When you take a refinery of that size offline, it’s very difficult for other sources to make up the equivalent loss.”

The Whiting refinery is the largest in the Midwest and sixth largest in the nation, with a normal capacity of 413,000 barrels per day. With that flow suddenly restricted, prices are spiking as far away as Oklahoma as companies shift supply to meet demand.

“You’re seeing a pretty large part of the country being impacted,” Laskoski said.

In Owatonna, the effects have so far been muted. At the Holiday station on Bridge Street, for example, unleaded gas cost $2.59 per gallon Thursday, compared to $2.52 on Tuesday. Other parts of the state have been less fortunate. In the Twin Cities, for example, prices rose a full 25 cents from Wednesday to Thursday.