HAMMOND | The BP refinery in Whiting has withdrawn its plans to build a portion of its $3.8 billion expansion in the city of Hammond.

BP officials sent a letter to the city officially withdrawing the company's request last week, BP spokesman Tom Keilman said Wednesday.

"BP has exercised its option to withdraw its petitions for a conditional use and a developmental variance that are currently pending before the Hammond Board of Zoning Appeals," Keilman said. "At this time, BP is currently reviewing its options for asphalt terminal operations and does not wish to have operations pending before the Hammond BZA while it does so."

Keilman said he could not elaborate on specifics for the withdrawal.

BP had been asking Hammond to let it build a $110 million asphalt distribution center on 65 acres the company owns at 1304 129th St., just west of Indianapolis Boulevard. The center would have made room for equipment the refinery needs to process heavy crude oil from Canada.

The center would have filled as many as 220 tanker trucks and 80 rail cars per day and sat just south of the Lost Marsh Golf Course, a development into which the city of Hammond has poured millions of dollars.

Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said Wednesday he was "sort of relieved" to have the plant off the table.

"I know they're pretty upset with me right now," McDermott said of BP officials.

McDermott said he and city officials worried about possible environmental effects from the plant, prompted in part by studies he said he reviewed that show a correlation between asphalt plants and cancer.

"I can't imagine being the mayor that brings in an asphalt plant" that could cause health problems, he said. "I would never forgive myself."

McDermott said refinery officials balked at a Hammond request to strictly monitor the air quality at the plant.

"I think we were totally responsible," McDermott said. "I'm a supporter of the expansion. The asphalt plant is what we always had problems with."

No BP officials attended the city's Board of Zoning Appeals meeting at which attorneys for the firm offered a one-sentence withdrawal of the permit requests needed to build the facility.

City environmental regulators appeared ready to approve the plan in March when they issued a 96-page report outlining several conditions through which BP could earn a favorable recommendation from the zoning board.

The report sparked a request by BP to postpone any decision on the asphalt center plan -- the seventh such delay since the project was first brought to city officials in October 2006.

"We were just doing our job," Ronald Novak, executive director of the Hammond Department of Environmental Management, said Wednesday night. "Which was dealing with issues brought to our attention by the public."

Times correspondent Steve Zabroski contributed to this report.