Marathon agrees to limit refinery pollution in US Clean Air Act settlement
By BEN FOX RUBIN
The US Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency said Marathon Petroleum agreed to reduce air pollution from all six of the company's petroleum refineries as part of a settlement over alleged violations of the Clean Air Act.
Marathon has agreed to new controls on combustion devices known as flares and to a cap on the volume of waste gas it will send to its flares.
Marathon, headquartered in Findlay, Ohio, will also pay a civil penalty of $460,000.
Marathon had no immediate comment on the settlement.
A flare is a mechanical device, ordinarily elevated high off the ground, used to combust waste gases.
The more waste gas a company sends to a flare, the more pollution occurs. The less efficient a flare is in burning waste gas, the more pollution occurs.
The EPA said it wants companies to flare less, and when they do flare, to fully combust the chemicals found in the waste gas.
As part of the effort to reach the new agreement, Marathon, under the direction and oversight of EPA, spent more than $2.4 million to develop and conduct combustion efficiency testing of flares.
In addition, beginning in 2009, Marathon installed equipment to improve the combustion efficiency of its flares. To date, Marathon has spent approximately $45 million on this equipment and projects that it will spend an additional $6.5 million for it.
Marathon also will spend an as-yet undetermined sum to comply with the flaring caps required in the consent decree.
From 2008 to the end of 2011, the controls Marathon installed eliminated approximately 4,720 tpy of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and 110 tpy of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) from the air.
As part of the new deal, an additional 530 tpy of VOCs and 30 tpy of HAPs are projected to be eliminated in the future.
The settlement is part of the EPA's national effort to reduce air pollution from refinery, petrochemical and chemical flares.
Dow Jones Newswires
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