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SHELL Shell Refinery Unit Had History of Malfunctions Before Fire ... Recent “upsets” like tripped compressors, pressure loss and freezing weather resulted in thousands of pounds of illegal pollution but no fines or citations from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. 
A photograph taken on April 30, 2022 shows the logo of the multinational oil and gas company Shell at a gas station. Credit: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images Original article: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09052023/shell-refinery-fire-malfunctions/ Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | ||
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Shell Refinery Unit Had History of Malfunctions Before Fire
Recent “upsets” like tripped compressors, pressure loss and freezing weather resulted in thousands of pounds of illegal pollution but no fines or citations from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
By Dylan Baddour
May 9, 2023
A photograph taken on April 30, 2022 shows the logo of the multinational oil and gas company Shell at a gas station. Credit: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images
Ed Puckett helps operate Toyah's water treatment plant on a volunteer basis. During a tour of the plant in early February, he maintained that the water is safe to drink. Credit: Mitch Borden/Marfa Public Radio
David Shifflett, a farmer in Reeves County, parses records of his protests to the Texas Railroad Commission against permits for nearby wastewater injection wells.
Storage tanks stand in the evening sun at an LNG terminal in Sabine Pass, Texas, on Thursday, April 14, 2022. Credit: Getty Images
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The units at a Houston-area Shell refinery that caught fire this weekend repeatedly malfunctioned in recent years without recourse from Texas regulators.
Since the start of 2022, the British oil giant reported at least four malfunctions at one olefins unit in its Deer Park petrochemical refinery that had resulted in thousands of pounds of illegal pollution but no fines or citations. Olefins units—the heart of petrochemical complexes—separate hydrocarbons into the components of plastics.
In every case prior to this weekend’s fire, Shell invoked the “affirmative defense,” an element of Texas law that relieves industrial operators of liability for pollution events that are reported as accidents or emergencies.
Critics of the affirmative defense say it allows companies to defer expensive equipment upgrades and maintenance without fear of consequences for dangerous malfunctions.
“If I was involved in a car crash and hurt someone, I can’t just put my hands up and say ‘it was an accident,” said Jaun Parras, a longtime public health advocate in Houston and co-director of TEJAS Barrios, an environmental justice nonprofit. “So why are we letting Shell and its funders get away with incidents like this?”
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Last month, a study released by the Environmental Integrity Project found that industries in Texas reported thousands of illegal emissions each year but rarely faced legal consequences.
“In only one half of one percent of these incidents did the state use its legal authority to require the companies to analyze the cause of the problem and take concrete action to avoid these pollution releases in the future,” the study said.
According to a Friday report filed by Shell with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a fire at its Deer Park chemical plant shut down the refinery’s olefins units on Friday afternoon. The fire went out early Saturday morning but then reignited and burned until Monday.
Monitors Detect No Threats to Health
A black plume rose above the neighborhoods east of Houston, where hundreds of thousands of people live along the edges of the nation’s largest petrochemical complex.
Throughout, Shell said the fire posed no threat to public health.
Air monitoring “has not detected any harmful levels of chemicals affecting neighboring communities,” the company said in a statement. “There is no danger to the nearby community.”
The TCEQ sent monitoring units to the area in response and said it “did not detect any readings of health concern.”
TCEQ mobile monitors on Saturday detected benzene at 34.2 parts per billion and 1,3-Butadiene at 19.4 ppb, in Channelview, an area north of the Shell refinery.
In the previous 10 days, both substances had peaked around 2 ppb at the stationary air monitors in Channelview.
In response to questions, TCEQ said it did not consider those levels to be “atypically high concentrations,” sitting below half the threshold density the TCEQ considers requiring further investigation.
According to Tim Doty, a former manager of the TCEQ’s mobile monitoring program, those readings should have spurred further investigation.
“Those certainly seem elevated to me from what the background should be, unless you’re sitting in a parking lot at a gas station,” said Doty, now a private environmental consultant. “It seems to me that if you found elevated concentrations you would want to spend more time there.”
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