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Harmful soot unchecked as Big Oil battles EPA over testing -Breaking

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© Reuters. FILE PHOTO A view of ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Refinery, Baton Rouge (Lawrence), U.S.A, May 15, 2021. REUTERS/Kathleen Flynn

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Tim McLaughlin

(Reuters] – The U.S. Oil Industry and Federal Environmental Officials have been at odds for years over how to measure deadly soot polluting from their refineries.

Condensable fine particle matter (or CFP) emissions are not being addressed in time. This pollutant has been released unchecked by scores of facilities all across the country, along with a host of other contaminants from the oil refineries. Researchers claim that this pollution takes adisproportionately high toll on health and well-being of the poor and minorities living near them.

California’s least-recognized regional regulator for air quality has attempted to crack down on the emissions. This effort has been met with litigation by oil companies located in California.

Condensable fine particle matter, a type of soot, is one that escapes the smokestack in a gas form before it solidifies into small particles as it cools. In 1991, the EPA proposed a way to measure it. This was in response to evidence that condensable fine particulate matter is at least as dangerous to humans’ lungs than normal soot.

According to the agency, even small amounts of fine soot particles may cause premature death, heart attack, lung cancer and asthma attacks. The EPA cites scientific research that estimates condensable soot and solid soot together cause over 50,000 deaths per year in the United States. These findings are disputed industry-wide.

The EPA declined to impose any limits on the pollutants in its condensable forms. The oil industry and its main lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), claim the agency has failed to come up with an accurate test to quantify it, according to EPA disclosures and interviews with independent testing firms, API officials and the trade group’s members.

According to the industry, current testing can exaggerate the amount of condensable SOOt emitted from refineries in certain circumstances. This is a problem that the EPA acknowledged.

“Costly retrofits or new control devices should not be required based on results from a faulty method,” major U.S. oil company Chevron Corp (NYSE: ) made a statement to Reuters.

According to stack-testing analysts and regulators, setting a national limit for pollutant emissions without agreement on the methods to measure them is impossible because that would lead to legal challenges by the industry.

In a statement, the EPA stated that they are still researching how to measure condensable SOOt reliably. However, it did not provide any details about a timeframe.

Greg Karras (an environmental scientist who worked with non-profit organizations to lower the carbon emissions in the refinery industry) said that delays can be dangerous.

“It is inappropriate to wait more than 30 years to protect people from this form of pollution while you are trying to perfect a test,” Karras said.

If condensable soot were eventually regulated, it would force nearly all of the country’s 135 oil refineries to invest in new pollution-control equipment, based on estimates of current emissions using the EPA’s contested testing method.

SAN FRANCISCO CRACKS DOWN

When inhaled, soot particles are much smaller than the size of a grain or sand. Solid forms of soot are regulated by the EPA. They can be measured easily through filtering smokestack emission. It is more difficult to quantify condensable because it is gaseous within the smokestack.

The EPA’s current test for condensable soot, called Method 202, uses probes and glass tubes placed inside refinery smokestacks to collect samples from the gas stream. It shows individual U.S. refineries can emit up to hundreds of tons of the pollutant per year, sometimes accounting for nearly half of a refinery’s total soot emissions, according to a Reuters review of regulatory documents filed by oil companies.

Material examined by the news agency is from 2017 to 2021. The results include Method 202 testing that refineries ordered to fulfill local requirements.

However, the API warns that the API test may produce incorrectly high levels of condensable SOOt when the samples react to other chemicals commonly found at refineries.

According to agency disclosures, the EPA acknowledges that Method 202 can overestimate levels of pollution. In an effort to reduce this bias, the EPA updated Method 202 in 2010. According to a 2014 EPA memo, Reuters saw the memorandum.

The EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NYSE:) in Ohio, which is charged with finding scientific and engineering solutions to environmental problems, is now working with the API on resolving issues with Method 202 while exploring an alternative methodology, the EPA told Reuters.

The long-running issue surfaced last year when regulators in San Francisco’s Bay Area, which includes nine counties around the city of San Francisco, passed the strictest soot regulations in the country in a bid to ease pollution in the neighborhoods around its cluster of oil refineries.

U.S. States and Regions are sometimes given the authority to establish their own pollution limits, as long as they adhere to federal regulations.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s (BAAQMD) new limits include condensable soot and require the industry – despite its objections – to use Method 202 to quantify those soot emissions. According to the agency, the measurement of condensable SOOt is not affected by ammonia in smokestacks if the refinery is running properly. Oil companies will have time to adjust to the new soot standards when they become effective in 2026.

Refining companies Chevron and PBF Energy (NYSE:) Inc are fighting the BAAQMD’s new regulations in Contra Costa County Superior Court, according to a civil complaint filed in September. They claim that the new rules will force them to invest hundreds of millions in pollution control equipment for their Bay Area refineries.

“API and our members support policies at the federal level that follow the science to drive emissions reductions, but the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is using the wrong approach,” Ron Chittim, API’s vice president of downstream policy, said in a statement to Reuters.

Chevron projects that it will cost $1.48 Billion to put a wet gas scrubber in its Richmond refinery, California. This is a method of pollution control Chevron wants to employ.

BAAQMD estimates its restrictions would cut the area’s annual death toll from soot by as much as half. Soot-related deaths currently average up to 12 a year from Chevron’s Richmond refinery and up to six deaths a year from PBF Energy’s refinery in Martinez, California, the regulator estimates.

In comments to BAAQMD staff, refiners challenged these figures. Industry claims that the numbers do not take into consideration lifestyle choices, like smoking, and contends that the health benefits of cutting down on soot production are overstated.

BAAQMD spokesperson refused to comment due to ongoing litigation.

NEW STANDARD

It remains to be seen whether other California air quality districts, regulators in other states or the federal government will follow the Bay Area’s lead.

The EPA under Democratic President Joe Biden has said it is weighing whether to lower its existing limits for soot pollution after former Republican President Donald Trump’s administration declined to do so. The agency did not say if it would crackdown on condensable SOOt.

Texas has the most refineries per capita in the nation, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality stated that it doesn’t plan to increase particulate matter restrictions.

Reuters also viewed recent tests at two refineries and found that condensable soot accounted in large part for the total soot created by such operations.

Delaware City Refinery, owned by PBF in Delaware, measured 48% condensable soot according to results of an external May stack test. This was part of facility’s compliance with federal regulations.

PBF did not respond to our request for comment.

Take a look at Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE 🙂 at Baton Rouge’s refinery. According to an August stack analysis filed with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, 17% of measured soot was condensable.

Exxon did not comment on the controversy over Method 202. The company said it was “continuously optimizing our processes to minimize emissions and enhance energy efficiency.”

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