Carlyle Group invests in Philadelphia refinery The Carlyle Group plans to invest in new energy technology to save a 140-year-old Philadelphia refinery and turn it into a profitable, state-of-the-art facility that the company hopes will continue to be the largest gasoline supplier on the East Coast. The D.C.-based private equity firm announced Monday that it will take majority ownership of Sunoco's Philadelphia refinery, which Sunoco had planned to shut down next month, creating a new company called Philadelphia Energy Solutions. Carlyle says the investment will preserve 850 jobs and add 100 to 200 new permanent positions. Carlyle managing director David Marchick declined to discuss financial details or speculate on when the facility will turn a profit. The refinery is the oldest continuously operating one of its kind on the East Coast, processing 330,000 barrels of oil per day from West Africa and the North Sea into various petroleum-based products. Carlyle managing director Rodney Cohen, who headed up the deal for the private equity firm, said he plans to eventually replace the imported oil with U.S.-based crude oil from the Bakken Oil Field in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada. The production from the Bakken field, which will be delivered to the Philadelphia plant via rail cars, has expanded in recent years by new oil drilling technology. The new project will include more than $200 million in capital investments, including $25 million in Pennsylvania state grants to help build a high-speed train to quickly unload the Bakken oil arriving from North Dakota. The capital investments are expected to create more than 1,000 temporary construction jobs to improve the quality and yield of the fuel products and to reduce emissions. Cohen said Carlyle is exploring a co-generation plant that would use the abundance of cheap natural gas underlying Pennsylvania to help fuel the refinery, making it more cost-efficient. The Carlyle Group has $159 billion of assets under management and employs more than 1,300 people in 32 offices on six continents.