Ogden-based Flying J has hired Deutsche Bank AG to seek a buyer for its North Salt Lake refinery.

"The company is exploring this as one among several potential paths that would facilitate exit from bankruptcy," spokesman Peter Hill of Kekst and Co. said in a prepared statement Tuesday in response to media inquiries.

Hill declined to provide "further detail or elaboration."

Flying J, including its Big West Refinery and Longhorn Pipeline subsidiaries, filed for voluntary reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December.

It sold the pipeline this summer in a deal estimated at $350 million. About Big West, spokeswoman Virginia Parker said last week that "we are looking at several options for reorganizing our Big West Refinery. Those plans involve refinance options as well as sale options, all of which will be run in parallel processes" that she described as being in the "infancy" stage.

Flying J agreed in early summer to merge its travel centers with those of Tennessee-based Pilot Travel Centers, with the headquarters to be with Pilot in Knoxville.

In an interview with the Deseret News three months ago, chief executive officer Crystal Call Maggelet said the company planned to maintain a strong presence in Utah, including a bank, a credit-card processing company, real estate holdings and the North Salt Lake refinery. At that time, she noted that "half of the profitability historically has been the refinery."

Flying J started as a petroleum-marketing company in 1968 with four gas stations and grew to one of the 20 biggest private companies in the country, with more than 13,000 employees, including 1,700 in Utah. It says the bankruptcy filing was triggered by short-term liquidity problems from falling gasoline prices and a tight credit market.

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