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When BP received approval to re-engineer its Whiting operation
in Indiana, intended to refine oil from Canada's tar sands,
environmental groups challenged the permits. It turned out that
BP's air permit application did not accurately reflect the real
emissions from the refinery. As explained by NRDC, one of the challengers:
"The expansion at BP Whiting adds three new flares, but
BP's pollution analysis assumed that these new flares would
never even be used. NRDC and the other citizen groups alleged in
their challenges, and US EPA substantially agreed, that BP had
committed multiple errors of this nature in calculating emissions
from the proposed expansion to support their conclusion, agreed to
by Indiana, that the overall emission increase was too small to
trigger modern pollution control requirements under the Clean Air
Act."
Under the settlement, BP will install new equipment to
limit the amount of waste gas sent to flaring devices and ensure
proper combustion efficiency for any gases that are burned in a
flaring device. The new air permit for the operation will
impose some of the lowest emission limits in the
US, enhance controls on wastewater containing benzene and require
an enhanced leak detection and repair program. BP will also spend
$9.5 million on projects at the refinery to reduce the emissions of
greenhouse gases and undertake a supplemental emissions monitoring
program. The program will continuously monitor benzene, toluene,
pentane, hexane, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and all compounds
containing reduced sulfur, and the resulting data will be posted on
a publicly-accessible website.
Canadian regulators may follow the US EPA direction in
developing the air pollution approvals for new and expanding
Canadian refineries, particularly those that will process tar sands
crude.
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