ExxonMobil Corp. agreed to spend about $300 million for new air pollution control and monitoring equipment at five petrochemical plants in Texas and three in Louisiana. The settlement resolves charges that the company and its ExxonMobil Oil subsidiary violated the federal Clean Air Act at the installations, the US Department of Justice, US Environmental Protection Agency, and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality jointly reported on Oct. 31.
The equipment will be installed on 26 industrial flares at Texas plants near Baytown, Beaumont, and Mont Belvieu, and at Louisiana facilities near Baton Rouge, the agencies said. Once fully implemented, the controls are expected to reduce more than 7,000 tons/year of volatile organic compounds emissions and more than 1,500 tons/year of benzene and other toxic air pollutants, they indicated.
The proposed consent decree was entered in US District Court for Southern Texas, and is subject to a 30-day comment period and final court approval. Under it, ExxonMobil first will minimize waste gas that is send to its flares by a creating waste minimization plan at each facility, and then improve the flares’ combustion efficiency, DOJ, EPA, and LDEQ jointly said.
At four of the plants, ExxonMobil will operate flare gas recovery systems to minimize the waste gas sent to the flares by recovering and recycling the gases before they are sent for to the flares for combustion. The flare gas recovery systems will allow ExxonMobil to reuse these gases as a fuel at its facilities or a product for sale, the entities said.
They said the company also must install and operate instruments and monitoring systems to ensure that gases sent to flares are combusted efficiently. ExxonMobil also will perform air quality monitoring to detect the presence of benzene at the fence lines of four of the covered plants, and pay a $2.5 million civil penalty. The company also agreed to spend $1 million to plant trees as a supplemental environmental project in Baytown as a natural buffer to reduce airborne pollutants from the chemical plants to nearby communities.
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