In 1995 the federal government decreed so-called Order 58-R, which set the volume of oil exports and obligated the Moscow Oil Refinery to build a factory for processing polypropylene-based chemicals, financed by petroleum revenues over a ten-year period.

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Meanwhile, the Refinery Hotel, located in a former hat factory in the Garment District, has suffused its design with nods both to the millinery and the building's Neo-Gothic exterior.

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Despite narrowly escaping capture and suffering a leg wound during a shootout with the Gestapo, he provided key information on an oil refinery and an underground V-1 rocket factory.

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The Refinery hotel at 63 W. 38th St. opened this week in a 1912 building that once housed a hat factory on its upper floors.

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