EPA launched a landmark update to oil refinery regulations almost a decade ago that was supposed to deliver big cuts to the industry’s vast stock of hazardous air pollutants.
But the toughened rules haven’t delivered for everyone, POLITICO’s E&E News has found in an investigation that also poses questions about the long-term effectiveness of more recent pollution-cutting forays in regions like the Louisiana corridor often dubbed “Cancer Alley.”
Although air emissions have since dropped — sometimes sharply — at the bulk of roughly 130 refineries covered by the 2015 standards, they’ve gone up at dozens of others, the most recent numbers show.
At Motiva’s complex in Port Arthur, Texas, for example, releases skyrocketed by more than 150 percent, from about 181,000 pounds in 2015 to 461,000 pounds in 2022, the last year for which data reported to EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory is available. More than half the nearby residents are people of color and more than one-third are low income, according to an accompanying demographic breakdown.
In the Salt Lake City area, releases from a Big West Oil plant almost quadrupled during the same period, from about 48,000 pounds to 170,000 pounds. At a Torrance, California, refinery owned by PBF Energy, emissions rose some 75 percent, from about 165,000 pounds to almost 293,000 pounds. Around both plants, the proportion of low-income residents and people of color similarly exceeds the respective state and national averages.
The wildly uneven results underscore the patchwork health protections often afforded by EPA’s hazardous air pollutant rules. While those standards are typically supposed to provide an ample safety margin, they may fall prey to lax implementation by state regulators, unanticipated pollution spikes and a lack of EPA follow-through to see how its initial predictions play out, critics say.
Whatever the initially “rosy” forecasts may show, “if you are going to put in a more protective standard, put in place a mechanism where you can account for it,” Shiv Srivastava, policy director for Houston-based Fenceline Watch, said in an interview.
At Western Washington University located near Seattle, Troy Abel said he has “zero confidence” that stronger standards alone can be trusted to reduce health risks.
Environmental regulations “are only as good as their enforcement,” said Abel, a professor of environmental policy who has found that emissions at some oil refineries in the state have grown more toxic even while dropping in quantity. “And you will find less stringent rules enforcement in some states versus others.”
Those forces could sap the ultimate strength off toughened chemical industry rules unveiled to fanfare this spring as part of President Joe Biden’s environmental justice push. They are projected to cut lifetime cancer risks for residents near many of the approximately 200 plants in Cancer Alley and other locales.
But Fenceline Watch is based in a part of Houston that ranks near the top nationally for pollution-related cancer risk and is home to some of the facilities covered by the new regulations. Although those stricter standards are “all good and fine,” Srivastava said, he expects them to have no impact on those risks as state regulators approve new projects that will bring more pollution.
“We’re experiencing an explosion in build-out,” he said.
Asked for comment on the findings, EPA spokesperson Tim Carroll said the agency expected refinery emissions of most pollutants to have dropped or remained stable since 2015.
The one exception, Carroll said, was hydrogen cyanide, a compound tied to neurological damage, which some refineries only started to publicly track after the stricter rules were in place. Although hydrogen cyanide was always emitted, Carroll said, “it’s just that facilities had more awareness and began reporting these emissions.”
Carroll also pointed to a first-ever “fenceline monitoring” requirement for refineries to keep tabs around their plant sites for ambient air concentrations of benzene, a particularly pernicious carcinogen tied to leukemia and other blood disorders. Since the refinery regulations took effect, benzene levels — and probably those of other volatile organic compounds — have fallen by almost one-third, Carroll said in an email. The new chemical plant rules encompass an expanded version of that monitoring requirement.
Risks tied to refineries
Refineries, a cornerstone of the fossil fuel economy, transform crude oil into products including kerosene, gasoline and jet fuel.
Best-known are Exxon Mobil, Valero and other corporations whose gas stations have made them household names. There are also smaller players such as Mississippi-based Ergon, a family-owned company that touts its origins as a one-truck fuel delivery service.
But refining is also a font of air pollutants stemming from leaks, smokestack discharges and flaring, with potentially serious health effects.
A 2020 study, for example, found “a statistically significant increased risk” of cancer among people living near Texas refineries, with the potential peril rising the closer the proximity.
Plants run by companies like Exxon Mobil and Phillips 66 are a fixture on a list of the nation’s “toxic 100” top air polluters compiled each year by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In a 2021 report, Greenpeace ranked “petroleum and coal products manufacturing” as the United States’ seventh most toxic industry.
While increases in hydrogen cyanide releases drove emissions growth at some plants, including Motiva’s Port Arthur complex, others reflected higher levels of hazardous pollutants like xylene and toluene in 2022 versus 2015, according to the TRI data.
For this story, E&E News tapped the spreadsheet of 142 refineries initially covered by EPA’s 2015 regulations.
Some of those plants have since closed or, if still in business, did not report data to the Toxics Release Inventory for all the years in question; others have converted to biofuels production. Of the 125 remaining refineries, 49 reported overall emissions greater in 2022 than in 2015.
The TRI numbers come with some caveats.
They may be estimates and can encompass compounds like ammonia and sulfuric acid not among those specifically targeted by the 2015 crackdown. But by an EPA screening formula that weighs the toxicity of specific pollutants and other factors, the potential harm posed by emissions from many of the same plants that registered increases had also risen by 2022.
In a statement, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a refiners trade group, said member companies have spent billions of dollars on scrubbers and other measures to cut emissions and improve efficiency. The group acknowledged, however, that unplanned outages, crude oil quality and increased production can lead to added pollution.
At Exxon Mobil’s plant in Joliet, Illinois, for example, emissions more than quadrupled from 2015 to 2022, soaring from about 337,000 pounds to 1.5 million pounds. In an email, company spokesperson Lauren Kight offered no explanation for the jump but said the plant’s releases have dropped approximately 90 percent since 2005.
“Our policy is to comply with all EPA regulations and we're working to further reduce emissions from our manufacturing sites and improve air quality in the communities in which we operate,” she said.
Representatives of Motiva, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco that ranks its Port Arthur refinery as among the world’s largest, did not reply to multiple queries about the plant’s emissions. Employees at Utah-based Big West Oil also did not respond to email and phone messages seeking comment about the mounting pollution from its North Salt Lake operation.
At the Torrance refinery, located in the Los Angeles area and now owned by New Jersey-based PBF, spokesperson Michael Karlovich attributed the emissions spike to a fluke: that the plant was running at “reduced capacity” through most of 2015 following an accident under a prior owner. If 2014 is used as the starting point for comparison, Karlovich said, the increase by 2022 is only about 5 percent.
Overall, the refinery sector’s air emissions fell by about 19 percent from 2015 to 2022, from 36.4 million pounds to 29.5 million pounds, the Toxics Release Inventory numbers show.
Releases at a Marathon operation in the eastern Kentucky hamlet of Catlettsburg, for example, plunged some 60 percent between 2015 and 2022, from about 500,000 pounds to less than 200,000 pounds. At a Pasadena Refining plant near Houston, the reductions were even steeper, falling from some 363,000 pounds to 68,000 pounds.
Fence-line monitoring
Like dozens of other industries, oil refineries are subject to hazardous air pollution regulations created by the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments and geared to ensuring that they use “maximum achievable” controls. Following EPA’s creation of the original standards more than a decade earlier, the 2015 update was a major strengthening.
Rarely before had EPA sought to toughen existing regulations on such a large industry. Besides imposing new limits on flaring and other provisions predicted to cut overall hazardous pollutant emissions by 10.4 million pounds annually, the agency — under pressure from environmental groups — dropped in the novel benzene tracking requirement.
The Clean Air Act “requires a healthy environment for all communities, and this rule delivers on EPA's commitment to environmental justice,” then-agency chief Gina McCarthy said in a statement at the time.
The provision aimed to give nearby “fenceline communities” information on what was actually in the air they were breathing. If benzene concentrations crossed a threshold of 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, plant operators were supposed to rein them in. In an analysis released early last year, EPA found that average levels around refineries had fallen by about 30 percent.
Supporting evidence of progress came this spring from the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit watchdog group which reported that benzene levels at only six plants on average crossed the 9-microgram threshold last year.
EPA’s inspector general, however, had previously cautioned that communities remained at risk. In an audit released last September, the in-house watchdog flagged benzene concentrations at some plants that exceeded the action level for months at a time and found that regulators failed to consistently act on refineries with the highest levels.
EPA officials agreed to make changes. They have done nothing, however, to scrutinize the real-world impact of the 2015 refinery regulations on emissions of other pollutants at individual plants, according to a response last year to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by E&E News.
And while other contaminants like nitrogen-based ammonia are not officially deemed hazardous under the Clean Air Act, they are not harmless. Once in the atmosphere, ammonia can contribute to the formation of microscopic particulate matter, a pollutant tied to a variety of respiratory and cardiovascular ills, including a higher risk of early death in some circumstances. It can also end up in bodies of water and damage aquatic life.
In the refinery sector, a particularly large source of ammonia in 2022 was Ergon’s plant in Vicksburg, Mississippi, with emissions totaling almost 926,000 pounds, up slightly from 2015, the Toxics Release Inventory shows.
In response to an email query, Ergon spokesperson Kathy Potts said the company was working on a project to eliminate its ammonia releases by next year.
