Petroleum industry experts say a catalytic cracking unit that produces gasoline at BP PLC's suburban Toledo refinery - shut down since April 21 because of a steam problem - failed to restart last weekend and will be down an additional week.

It is unclear how much of the 160,000-barrel-a-day capacity is shut down, just as prices at gas stations in the Midwest are near record levels.

Valerie Corr, a spokesman at BP's Chicago regional headquarters, would not elaborate on the report other than to say, "It's just one unit of the refinery."

Mary Caprella, a spokesman at the local refinery, said, "We still are working on maintenance at the facility and are operating safely."

Officers of Local 1-346 of the United Steelworkers of America union that represents refinery workers also declined to comment, but one, who asked not to be identified, said he didn't know when the unit would reopen.

BP has not disclosed how much production has been cut.

However, the Oregon refinery outage was named in news reports as one of the main reasons for a spike in crude-oil futures prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange two weeks ago and more recently as one of the factors contributing to continued high gasoline prices in the Detroit area.

Ms. Caprella said the refinery has about 525 full-time employees and an additional 350 contract workers are doing maintenance and construction projects there.

First Published May 31, 2007, 9:07 a.m.