HOUSTON -- It’s taken three years of post-Hurricane Rita restoration work, but BP’s Texas City refinery this week regained its capability to operate at full capacity, meeting its own end of 2008 deadline.

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The milestone was reached Wednesday when the unit that produces high-octane gasoline blending products finally began at the 475,000-barrel-a-day plant, BP spokesman Scott Dean said Friday.

The plant’s revival comes in the midst of a recession, with a 4 percent drop in demand as oil prices fell $100 a barrel from summer highs.

“It’s nice that it’s back on, and that’s commendable, but the timing relative to the situation out in the commodity markets isn’t too great,” John Parry, an analyst with IHS Herold, told the Houston Chronicle. “Refining margins are down and oil prices are a third of what they were.”

But Parry said BP is delivering on promises to improve its operation. In addition to getting the plant back online he noted last fall’s ramp-up of its Thunder Horse platform in the Gulf of Mexico after three years of delays.

BP is still awaiting word from a federal judge in Houston regarding a plea deal to resolve its criminal liability in the March 2005 explosion at the Texas City plant that killed 15 people and injured many more.

The deal called for BP to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Clean Air Act, pay a $50 million fine, and be on probation for three years for safety and maintenance failures that led to the blast, but victims challenged whether the deal sufficiently punishes the London-based company.

BP’s Texas City plant is the nation’s third-largest refinery behind two Exxon Mobil plants in Baytown and Baton Rouge, according to the Energy Information Administration.