Chevron Phillips to make $118M in upgrades to settle Clean Air Act violations

Chevron Phillips agreed Wednesday to make $118 million worth of upgrades and perform additional compliance measures at three of its facilities in Texas, to settle claims the petrochemical company violated the Clean Air Act. File Photo by Gary I Rothstein/UPI | License Photo

March 9 (UPI) -- Chevron Phillips agreed to make around $118 million worth of upgrades and perform compliance measures at three of the company's petrochemical manufacturing facilities, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.

The Texas-based petrochemical company will also pay a $3.4 million civil penalty to resolve the allegations that it violated the Clean Air Act and state air pollution control laws.

The facilities are located in Cedar Bayou, Port Arthur, and Sweeney, Texas.

The Justice Department said the company failed to properly operate and monitor its industrial flares, leading to excess emissions of harmful air pollution at the facilities. The department also accused the company of failing to comply other operating restraints, ensuring volatile organic compounds and hazardous air pollutants contained in gases routed to the flares, were efficiently combusted.

Once the agreed-upon work is completed, it will eliminate thousands of tons of air pollution from flares, according to the Justice Department.

Flares are devices used to combust waste gases that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere during certain industrial operations.

If operated properly, flares should have high "combustion efficiency," meaning they combust nearly all harmful waste gas constituents, turning them into water and carbon dioxide, according to the Justice Department.

The company will be limited to how much gas it can send for flaring. It will also install a gas recovery system at the Cedar Bayou facility, capturing rather than burning waste, to be recycled as fuel or sold.

The settlement also comes with more stringent monitoring, and also expected to reduce emissions of ozone-forming volatile organic compounds by 1,528 tons per year and of toxic air pollutants, including benzene, by 158 tons per year.

"This settlement will require Chevron Phillips to install pollution control and emissions monitoring equipment at three facilities in Texas, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other harmful gases by thousands of tons per year," Acting EPA Assistant Administrator Larry Starfield said in a statement.

"Those controls, plus a requirement for fence line monitoring of benzene emissions and corrective actions when benzene readings are high, will result in significant benefits for the local communities in Texas."