MOSCOW (MRC) -- The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it has revoked an expansion permit for the Limetree Bay oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands, citing concerns that the area around the facility is overburdened with pollution, reported Reuters.
The decision allows the plant to keep operating but will block ongoing expansion work pending an EPA review to assess measures the facility needs to take to protect nearby residents.
“Withdrawing this permit will allow EPA to reassess what measures are required at the Limetree facility to safeguard the health of local communities in the Virgin Islands, while providing regulatory certainty to the company,” said EPA acting Regional Administrator Walter Mugdan.
The 200,000 barrel per day facility on St. Croix had restarted this year after a decade idle after securing a Clean Air Act “plantwide applicability limit” permit from the Trump administration on Dec. 2, 2020. The permit had allowed it to build additional units without being deemed a new source of pollution, which triggers more stringent pollution controls.
The owner of the refinery, Limetree Bay Ventures, backed by private equity firms EIG and Arclight Capital, challenged requests by the EPA to increase air quality monitoring. The company argued the monitors are not necessary and that it should not have to pay the costs to operate them.
As MRC informed before, earlier this month, CITGO Petroleum Corporation announced its Corpus Christi Refinery had received the prestigious 2020 ENERGY STAR certification, awarded by the US EPA, for the second year in a row.
We remind that in September 2020, Citgo Petroleum Corp said it did not plan to idle its 418,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Lake Charles, Louisiana, refinery damaged by Hurricane Laura. Rumors have circulated since Laura’s passage over the Lake Charles area on Aug. 27 that Citgo was considering shutting the refinery for an indefinite period because of the extent of the damage and continuing low demand for motor fuels in the COVID-19 pandemic.
We also remind that in the first week of July, 2020, Citgo restarted the large gasoline-producing fluid catalytic cracker at its 167,500-barrel-per-day (bpd) Corpus Christi, Texas, refinery.
Propylene is the main feedstock for the production of polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
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