US Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and three US House Democrats from Illinois asked a US Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 official to object to a construction permit BP Products North America Inc. seeks for its Whiting, Ind., refinery.
Durbin and Reps. Melissa L. Bean, Rahm Emanuel, and Janice D. Schakowsky said in a May 30 letter to Bharat Mathur, acting administrator at EPA’s Region 5, they are concerned about possible additional flaring if the BP America division is allowed to proceed with a $3.8 billion modernization.
The project would allow the plant to process more Canadian heavy crude oil and increase motor fuel production by about 1.7 million gpd, a BP America spokeswoman said. The 4-year project is designed to shift crude inputs at the 405,000 b/d refinery to 90% from 30% Canadian heavy crude.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management issued a permit for the project in May which overlooks flaring and possible increases in carbon dioxide and other emissions above previous permit levels, the federal lawmakers charged.
Alleged assumptions
The project includes three new flares and increased use of existing flares, they told Mathur. “Yet the permit essentially assumes that the new flares will, for the most part, never be used” and in other ways miscalculates flare emissions, they said.
IDEM indicated in its technical support document addendum that unplanned flaring does not need to be accounted for in a US Clean Air Act netting analysis.
That view, Durbin and the House members said, is wrong and contrary to the federal law, which does not allow a permitting agency to remove a large emissions category from its calculations entirely, to make an unsupported assumption that such emissions would be netted out based on narrative assurances that the emissions would be minimized, or to completely exclude emissions from unplanned events.
“The applicable regulations expressly specify that all (not just planned) startup, shutdown, and malfunction emissions must be factored into netting calculations. Particularly in light of EPA Region 5’s issuance of a notice to BP’s Whiting refinery for flaring violations, we believe that flaring at the expanded Whiting site must be accounted for in the permit,” the lawmakers said.
Notice given
EPA’s Region 5 office notified BP Products North America on Nov. 29 that the company violated New Source Performance Standards in the Clean Air Act at the refinery by modifying flares without complying with requirements, exceeding sulfur dioxide emissions limits, and failing to monitor emissions from several sources.
The notice also said BP did not get a permit when it modified the FCC unit or conduct timely performance tests of hydrogen chloride emissions from its catalytic reforming units. An EPA Region 5 spokesman would not comment on the matter because it is an ongoing investigation.
