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Now we wait.

As many expected, Big West on Rosedale Highway has stopped refining oil.
What's next is harder to predict.

Will Big West sell? Will it work out a deal with its suppliers to get running again? Will the state Attorney General's office — or maybe the California Energy Commission — step in to force a resolution?

Before making your own guess, take a moment to consider how we got here.

Utah-based Flying J Inc. bought the refinery from Shell Oil Co. in 2005, when the truck stop operator was still new to refining. Unlike Shell, Flying J — an outsider in an industry that heavily favors insiders — does not produce its own oil. That's two strikes against it right there.

Fast-forward to late 2008. Refiners nationwide are getting hammered by plummeting oil prices. Suddenly its lenders come knocking on Flying J's doors. Unable to pay up, the company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late December.

Local oil producers get nervous fast. Many cut off shipments to Big West. One of the majors, Shell, not only quits delivering its own oil, but by shutting off a pipeline that used to carry about a fifth of the refinery's crude, it also cuts off oil from other producers.

Word gets around inside the refinery that Shell won't budge until Flying J agrees to what executives there consider extraordinary payment terms. No deal. Stalemate.

Then come the conspiracy theories. The refinery's union and a Santa Monica watchdog group accuse Shell of trying to shut Big West down so that it can reap bigger profits at its Bay Area refinery. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., asks the state Attorney General's office to step in and investigate, which it does.

Soon after, there's a big day in a Delaware bankruptcy court. The judge gives Flying J permission to spend $75 million to pay off "critical vendors" — suppliers deemed so important to the company's operations that they must jump to the front of the I-need-money line.

It's unclear whether this is a win for Big West, because Flying J gives no indication how it will spend the money. Locals tied up in the whole mess are left to wonder whether some of it will come to California to rescue the refinery.

The rest is predictable. There's an announcement that the refinery will close. Layoff talks begin. Big West prepares to mothball the plant.

The real question is how bad all of this is going to hurt. How long will the refinery be down? How long will its workers be out of a job? What will it mean to local oil producers who for so long have relied on Big West to buy their crude?

And what of the rest of us? Lately, we're told, the refinery's products go mostly to Kern County consumers. That means the price of gasoline should be heading higher. And no wonder: Big West normally produces 2 percent of the state's gasoline and 6 percent of its diesel. For its part, the energy commission says not to fear, as other refiners will surely step up to rebalance demand with supply.

Any solutions out there?

We keep hearing how people are going back to school these days to wait out the recession. If that includes you, and it's an MBA you're after, check out what Cal State Bakersfield wants to do for you:

GMAT mobile testing bus stops at CSUB; test prep course available

For those interested in pursuing a Master of Business Administration degree, California State University, Bakersfield will host the mobile Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT) bus on March 3 and 4. During the stop, the four-hour GMAT examination will be administered to students.

“Admission to virtually any accredited MBA program requires completion of the GMAT,” said Ron Pimentel, director of CSUB’s MBA program. “The test is not usually offered locally, so this is a great opportunity for anyone thinking about entering the MBA program.”

The GMAT bus stop at CSUB marks the beginning of the spring 2009 tour and is the first local stop since October 2007. In all, the bus will stop at 17 universities in 12 states.

“GMAT scores are good for five years. Students who think they might want to start the MBA program within that time should plan to take the exam when the bus visits CSUB,” Pimentel said. “Otherwise, they will have to travel to testing locations outside of Bakersfield, such as Santa Maria, Fresno or Los Angeles. There are no immediate plans to test again locally in the near future.”

A $250 fee is required to take the exam and students must register at least 24 hours in advance. For more information and registration log onto www.mba.com <http://www.mba.com> .

In addition to providing a location for the mobile testing unit, CSUB Extended University is offering a GMAT preparation course during February to help students prepare for the test. The class is a four-day course given each Saturday in February and costs $395.

To register online for the preparation course, log onto www.csub.edu/eud <http://www.csub.edu/eud>... or contact CSUB Extended University at (661) 654-2441.

It's getting time again. The federal Bureau of Land Management has set another of its Bakersfield oil and gas auctions.

The announcement we received by e-mail today is pasted below. May it serve you well.

BLM Plans Oil and Gas Competitive Lease Auction
The Bureau of Land Management is conducting an auction of oil and gas leases on federal land on March 11.  The lease auction will be held at the Bakersfield Marriott at the Convention Center, 801 Truxtun Ave., Bakersfield.  The room opens at 8 a.m. to allow bidders to register and obtain a bid number.  The competitive oral auction begins at 9 a.m. 

The competitive lease auction involves 11 parcels for a total of 5,210.70 of public lands in Kern County.

A detailed notice of the lease auction with parcel descriptions, acreage, lease terms and conditions, oral bidding procedures and requirements, and other sale information is available on the Internet at http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en... If you are not able to access this site, copies of the lease sale notice is available at the California BLM State Office and the BLM Bakersfield Field Office for $5.

BLM is required by law to periodically offer federal land for lease for oil and gas exploration and development.  The oil and gas industry is encouraged to submit an "expression of interest" for federal land parcels in California that have potential for development.  An “expression of interest” is a letter or a form listing the legal description of lands an individual or company is interested in seeing offered for lease.

Expressions of interest for the December 2009 lease auction should be sent to the BLM, Attention:  Laurie Moore, 2800 Cottage Way Suite W-1618, Sacramento, Calif. 95825 no later than May 10, 2009.

For questions regarding the March 11 lease auction or to obtain a form to submit an expression of interest, contact Laurie Moore at (916) 978-4377 or  Nora DeDios at the BLM Bakersfield Field Office, (661) 391-6129.

The single best thing about being a business journalist is that we generally don't have to work election nights. Not, that is, unless USHomeAuction.com schedules a big U.S. home auction at Rabobank Arena and instead of watching early election results on our own couch, we have to walk 10 or however many blocks in a suit and tie, only to be told everywhere we're not allowed to sit.

Really, though, for a lot of people November's home auction event was a good deal. And it's happening again tonight.

Here's some information stolen right off a company press release e-mail this very morning:

13107 Solario Ln Bakersfield, CA 93306 -- 5-bedroom, 3449 sq. foot home valued at $466,000 with a starting bid of $129,000

9900 Vertrice Ave Bakersfield, CA 93311 – 3-bedroom, 1902 sq. foot home valued at $359,000 with a starting bid of $89,000

10610 Grand Prairie Dr Bakersfield, CA 93311 -- – 5-bedroom, 2956 sq. foot home valued at $309,000 with a starting bid of $79,000.

We wrote a little something about the last event, which you can read here.

Tonight's event is set to start at 6:30. The press release says more than 100 houses are scheduled to be auctioned.

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Our latest map for homes that sold in Bakersfield from Dec. 1 to 7 is online now.

We regularly publish single-family home sale transactions that occurred between individuals, as well as foreclosures, with information compiled by reporter Jenny Shearer.

Check out what homes are going for, color-coded by price, with information from First American Real Estate Solutions. Highlights for Dec. 1 to 7:

• 97 homes are new on the map.

• Priciest? One sold for $392,500 in the 93312 ZIP code. It was 2,592 square feet.

• Cheapest? Two sold for $40,000 each, one at 938 square feet in the 93305 ZIP code, and one at 752 square feet in the 93308 ZIP code.

And of course there are lots of prices in between.

We're also working on a story about how for some folks, it's a great time to buy a home. Have a story to share? Write to Jenny Shearer and be sure to include your phone number.

— Christine Peterson

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Thursday night the owners of a miniature golf franchise new to Bakersfield staged a ribbon cutting to celebrate the debut of the state's second Monster Mini Golf. It opens to the public at noon on Saturday, Jan. 24.

Monster Mini Golf is an arcade and 18-hole indoor course with blacklights, animatronic 3-D creatures and loud pop music. It's located at 4751 White Lane, in the plaza at the southeast corner of White Lane and Stine Road behind the In-Shape City health club.

Local franchise owners teacher Deanna Downs, 39, and her state trooper husband Tim Downs, 48, cut the white ribbon separating the course from the arcade with help from their children, 12-year-old Ryan and 5-year-old twins Robert and Samantha.

Then a sea of excited children and adults poured onto the course with flourescent clubs and golf balls, putting around life-sized grumbling monsters to Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Thanks to a blacklight, white shoelaces glowed in the dark, as did the white surface of a nearby air hockey table.

"We wanted to bring something to Bakersfield that was fun for kids to do," Deanna Downs said. "We were looking for a family-oriented concept."

Company founder Christina Vitagliano was on hand for the ribbon cutting, too. She started the company five years ago and has grown it to 18 locations, including the one in Bakersfield and another in Rancho Cordova. She has high hopes for her newest venue.

"There are a lot of families here," she said.

And it doesn't hurt that it's an indoor venue in a place known for temperature extremes. Just one caveat. Asthmatics: beware the fog machine.

Prices for 18 holes of mini-golf run $5.50 - $7.50 per person, based on height. There is no cover charge to get in.

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A new, 13,000-square-foot CVS drug store is under construction in front of Sport Chalet at California Avenue and Stockdale Highway.

It's refreshing to see a store OPENING rather than closing in this economy, so this would be good news but for one troubling thing.

The drug store's parent company, CVS Caremark Corp. (NYSE: CVS) has purchased Longs Drug Stores Corp., and will be converting all Longs stores to CVS stores. The new CVS they're building happens to be a stone's throw from a Longs in an adjacent shopping center.

We called CVS Caremark and asked if that or any other Longs in town would be closing. There are three Longs stores in the southwest's 93309 zip code: 5510 Stockdale Highway, 4300 California Ave., and 3500 Stine Road.

There are two other stores in other nearby zips: another Stockdale Highway location further west (93311), and at 4400 Coffee Road (93308).

A spokesman, Mike DeAngelis, insisted the company is "not scheduled to close any of those stores." The company does intend to "consolidate rather than convert" some of the 521 Longs stores it acquired, but none in Bakersfield are on that list.

We pointed out that the new CVS and one of two Longs stores on Stockdale Highway are next door to each other, but DeAngelis reiterated no planned closures.

So it seems, for now, the official stand is Bakersfield will have two CVS stores side by side.

We'll be watching to see if that changes. Stay tuned.

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What a relief it would be to hear Flying J come clean on what it intends to do with Big West refinery.

That’s probably not going to happen, by the way. The company has steadfastly refused to share with the news media its plans for the Rosedale Highway plant.

Will it take some of the $75 million set aside by a bankruptcy judge last week to pay oil suppliers enough money to get the refinery running full steam again? Don’t know.

Will it sell the refinery to an organization not so encumbered with bankruptcy that its key suppliers don’t trust it to pay for new shipments? Couldn’t say.

Will it let the refinery —producer of 2 percent of California’s gasoline and 6 percent of its diesel — sit idle while the company focuses on more pressing concerns in Utah, where Flying J Inc. is headquartered? Good question.

Or, will it keep stringing everyone along, leaving the plant to operate at a minimal level, its suppliers to wonder whether they will once again have a good home for their barrels of crude, and the refinery’s workers to worry daily about their future. Again, beats me.

But if all we can do is sit, watch and wait, here are a few things to look out for, and what they might possibly indicate:

-    Flying J works out an arrangement with Shell Oil Co. to reopen a pipeline that supplies roughly one-fifth of the oil the refinery normally uses. If that happens, other local oil producers may decide to jump in with new deliveries. Even if they don’t get paid soon for debts invoiced prior to the Chap. 11 filing on Dec. 22, they could still earn money on new barrels.

-    The company blows all the $75 mil on vendors more closely involved with its truckstops, which may provide a bigger and more steady flow of cash. That would probably do nothing to help the refinery.

-    The refinery shuts down again, for supposed maintenance or not. That could suggest the company is either unable to secure sufficient oil shipments or that it has given up trying. Given how expensive it is to fire up such a refinery, letting it go idle again could hint that Flying J is throwing in the towel and might be looking for a buyer.

We really haven’t any reason to believe one or the other of these scenarios might come to pass. Again, Flying J simply isn’t telling.

And the company’s silence is too bad, because Bakersfield has a huge stake in what becomes of  Big West. Its fate is closely tied to local gas prices, jobs and the proposed $700 million expansion of the refinery.

So, keep reading!

Every week, reporter Jenny Shearer compiles data on homes selling in metro Bakersfield using information from First American Real Estate Solutions.

Then I use a mapping program called ZeeMaps to make a map of the data and post it for readers.

This week the data hit home — hard. A home just a few streets away from me, a little north and toward homes nicer than mine, sold for just $130,000. A great time to buy, I am sure, for first-time buyers and people in a position to take on the responsibility of home ownership.

But my jaw dropped. The home was nearly two and a half times as big as mine. It had four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a pool. (Mine has three bedrooms, two bathrooms and no pool.)

— Christine Peterson

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Read the latest in job accomplishments of local people in business.

For example, Jeremy T. Tobias (pictured)  has been hired to be interim executive director of the Community Action Partnership of Kern, the county's largest nonprofit agency.

People in Business announces new hires, promotions, awards, professional achievements and other business “people news” in Kern County. Submissions can be mailed to The Bakersfield Californian, business editor, P.O. Bin 440, Bakersfield, CA 93302; faxed to 395-7519; or e-mailed to business@bakersfield.com. Sorry, photos that are submitted cannot be returned. For information, call 395-7345 between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Recently we've seen several mentions of a group of folks in town calling themselves "do gooders" who are going to restaurants and buying random folks food, bringing lunch for a police substation, donating blankets to the homeless shelter. This made us very curious. We had a reporter contact them to do an interview, but they said they would not be able to do so until next week, when their press kit would be available.

That made us even more curious. If this were a group of regular people they probably wouldn't offer a press kit. That's the kind of thing that comes from a polished media outfit. We checked out their web page, Twitter account, Facebook account and they are all very slick.

It reminded one editor of an previous example of "good deed marketing." In that case, some Honda dealers sent their employees out to help people pump gas or hand out free popcorn at the movies.

Could this be the same? We can't say for sure at this point. But the do gooder webpage IS registered to Simon + Associates, an advertising firm that represents some local credit unions.

Regardless we won't have to wait too long to find out. The site says a "big reveal" is coming on Feb. 7.

-- Davin McHenry

I just got off the phone with a couple of the people running the ad campaign for the "do gooders." They won't reveal their client's name, but said it's for a new nonprofit local organization that wanted to "demonstrate good works to our community."

The "do gooders" — who show up dressed in yellow shirts — are paid for any expenses they incur while doing their good deeds. The ad reps said they're not surprised people are skeptical about the campaign, but they're not trying to sell cars or push anything on the public.

-- Jason Kotowski
 

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Circuit City is liquidating its remaining stores...

That makes Mervyns, Circuit City and  Shoe Pavilion all gone to bankruptcy in the one center on California Avenue.

Sorry, but gallows humor is all I have left. Any bets on who's next?

-- Gretchen Wenner, staff writer

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Gottschalks announced today in has filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

The company intends to file motions to enable the business to operate without interruption.

It said it will seek either a buyer or investors to create value for stakeholders.

Read our story so far.

What now? What do you see for the future of Gottshalks?

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TogosPressCall.wav

Reporters are bombarded by press releases.

A few efforts, such as the one I'm trying to post, merit sharing strictly for entertainment purposes. It's a WAV audio file so hopefully I can upload it and y'all can listen.

This was a phone message left for me today, from cheery Rachel (whom, a colleague pointed out, makes at least twice what we do) who can't quite pronounce Togo's, the sandwich chain she is touting.

IN OTHER NEWS, followers of Bakersfield Bubble's blog were dismayed by his final post last week. The witty site has for years served as a local water-cooler for snide real estate and economic musings.

Fortunately, one of Bubble's readers has launched a blog for the same anonymous characters to quench their morning snark fix. Good luck to ye, BakoEcon!

-- Gretchen Wenner, staff writer

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Our latest map for homes that sold in Bakersfield from Nov. 17 to 23 is online and ready for a peek.

We regularly publish single-family home sale transactions that occurred between individuals, as well as foreclosures.

Check out what homes are going for, color-coded by price, with information from First American Real Estate Solutions compiled by reporter Jenny Shearer.

Highlights for Nov. 17 to 23:

• 100 homes are new on the map.

• Priciest? One sold for $650,000 in the 93311 ZIP code. It was 4,150 square feet.

• Cheapest? One sold for $37,000 in the 93305 ZIP code. It was 800 square feet.

Thoughts on the prices or the current market?

— Christine Peterson

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What's happening wtih Gottschalks? Going bankrupt? Being rescued?

Shoppers, have you heard anything?

Employees, what have you been told?

Blog it here or write to reporter Gretcher Wenner.

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Our Lost Treasures stories showed that many people in Bakersfield share an affinity for places no longer on the local landscape — such as Brock's Department Store.

Now Fresno-based Gottschalks is struggling, negotiating with overseas investors for a badly needed infusion of cash.

Business nuts and bolts aside, what are your favorite shopping spots?

What are your top memories of shopping or working at Brock's, Gottschalks or other Bakersfield favorites, stores that are still here, or those that have gone?

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Our latest map for homes that sold in Bakersfield from Nov. 1 to 16 is ready for a peek. Our update contains two weeks worth of sales.

We regularly publish single-family home sale transactions that occurred between individuals, as well as foreclosures.

Check out what homes are going for, color-coded by price, with information from First American Real Estate Solutions compiled by reporter Jenny Shearer.

Highlights for Nov. 1 to 16:

• 157 homes are new on the map.

• Priciest? One sold for $642,000 in the 93311 ZIP code. It was 3,502 square feet.

• Cheapest? One sold for $40,000 in the 93307 ZIP code. It was 1,076 square feet.

Comments, anyone?

— Christine Peterson