Federal judge fines Sinclair Tulsa Refining

April 12, 2007
A federal judge ordered Sinclair Tulsa Refining Co. on Apr. 4 to pay a $5 million criminal fine and sentenced two of its former managers to 6 months of home detention and 3 years of probation for violating provisions of the US Clean Water Act.

Nick Snow
Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON, DC, Apr. 12 -- A federal judge ordered Sinclair Tulsa Refining Co. on Apr. 4 to pay a $5 million criminal fine and sentenced two of its former managers to 6 months of home detention and 3 years of probation for violating provisions of the US Clean Water Act.

US District Judge Claire V. Eagan also ordered the Sinclair Oil Corp. subsidiary to make a $500,000 community service payment to the River Parks Authority, which strives to maintain, preserve, and develop the Arkansas River and adjacent land. She also sentenced the company to 2 years of probation.

Eagan fined one former manager, Harmon Connell, $160,000 and ordered him to provide 100 hr of community service. The other, John Kapura, was fined $50,000 and ordered to provide 50 hr of community service.

The company and its two former employees previously admitted to knowingly manipulating refinery processes and wastewater flows and discharges to create unrepresentative samplings during mandatory sampling under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit program.

The US Department of Justice said the manipulated samples were intended to influence analytical testing results reported to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].