AIR & WATER

MONITORING NEWSLETTER  

March 2013
No. 401

BP to Spend More Than $300 Million to Reduce Emissions from Flares, Heaters, and Boilers

The U.S. EPA announced a settlement with BP that requires the company to spend more than $300 million to reduce more than 4000 tons of pollution from flares, heaters and boilers, catalytic crackers and other units at the Whiting refinery in Indiana. This agreement resolves a permit challenge from public interest groups and enforcement actions brought by EPA that were related to the company’s expansion of the facility to accommodate tar sands.

According to EPA, the agreement will reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds by more than 3000 tons; nitrogen oxide by 328 tons; sulfur dioxide by 377 tons; and hazardous air pollutants by 170,000 pounds. These pollutants contribute to unhealthy levels of smog or fine particulates (or both) that trigger asthma attacks and other respiratory ailments, while hazardous air pollutants like benzene are known carcinogens.

The settlement breaks new ground by exposing flares as a major source of air pollution from refineries, and by establishing stringent but cost-effective requirements that will cut those emissions by more than ,000 tons. Refinery flares installed to burn waste gases from various pollutants were once thought to be a relatively insignificant source of emissions, accounting for several hundred tons of VOC emissions a year at most. Those low numbers were based on and outdated EPA methodology that estimated that only 1 to 2 percent of refinery gases sent to flares were released to the environment, with the rest destroyed during combustion. Based on a closer look at BP’s flares, EPA estimates a loss rate closer to 15 percent which means actual releases of pollution were 7.5 to 15 times higher than reported.

Recent reports, including several studies by the Marathon refinery, indicate that these high loss rates are an industry-wide phenomenon. While there are multiple causes, it turns out that refinery gases that are flared often have much lower heat values than are needed for the efficient combustion of volatile organic pollutants.

The settlement addresses this problem in several ways that will reduce this pollution at a very low cost. BP has agreed to install compressors that should recapture about 90 percent of the gas that would otherwise be sent to flares — the recovered gas can be used to fuel the refinery’s heaters and boilers, saving energy costs. The settlement also establishes a protocol to assure at least 98 percent destruction of pollutants sent to flares, e.g., through closer monitoring of heat values and by preventing the “oversteaming” of flares to control smoking (too much steam lowers the heat rate and interferes with combustion).

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