Isle refinery still owned by Texans

Happy days are here again for the many Hawaii employees of Tesoro Corp.

Par Petroleum Corp. of Houston, has agreed to buy Tesoro’s Hawaii oil refinery, distribution network and 31 gas stations, putting to rest fears that the 240 or so Hawaii employees of the San Antonio-based Tesoro could soon be out of work.

Tesoro hasn’t been using its Hawaii refinery since April — it has been importing already- refined petroleum products since then — but the plan is to reboot the equipment later this year and again give the state two operating oil refineries, the other one being owned by Chevron Corp.

Some folks might wish the state had no refineries — but you can’t always get what you want, and for now, at least, Hawaii needs them.

So, welcome, Par Petroleum, and aloha Tesoro.

Days are longer but not really

It’s officially summer!

It actually started yesterday at 7:04 p.m. with the summer solstice, which is when the sun takes its largest path across the sky all year.

The event coincides with what most people call the longest day of the year, though the total is still 24 hours. Specifically the summer solstice is the day with the most amount of daylight, though this year both Thursday and today are clocking in at 13 hours, 25 minutes, 54 seconds.

Tomorrow the amount of daylight will drop by 2 seconds, and so on, until we reach the winter solstice, on Dec. 21, the shortest day of the year, with daylight of just 10 hours, 50 minutes, 15 seconds.

Then we’ll start over.