Oil: a burning issue?

Around 6 am on Friday morning I was on the New Jersey Turnpike returning from Long Island back to Washington. My attention was drawn to a cloud of black smoke and an orange glow in the sky that seemed to come from the Hess oil storage and refinery site. At first I thought one of the oil storage tanks must be on fire. Flames were shooting over the tree tops. But, as I passed the site I saw that the flame was rising from a big chimney. This flame was much larger than what I was use to seeing in normally refinery operations. It looked like someone was trying to burn off a large quantity of some type of oil or gasoline. I thought this curious. Why would an oil facility be doing that? With oil dropping down to $62 a barrel burning off too much fuel/oil would help to create a shortage and would then cause prices to rise. Ah, never mind.