MOSCOW (MRC) -- A Valero refinery outside of New Orleans recently produced lung-damaging soot at rates that exceeded federal limits while outpacing other major US refineries, reported Reuters with reference to disclosures by state and federal environmental regulators.
Soot, or small and fine particle pollution, has an outsized effect on poor and minority communities living near industrial sites, causing thousands of premature deaths each year from lung and heart damage, according to the EPA. In June, the EPA said it was reviewing whether to impose stricter limits on soot pollution.
The rate of pollution observed at Valero Energy's St. Charles refinery in Norco, Louisiana, based on EPA standards, is the highest among the 50 largest US refineries, according to the Reuters examination of stack test results.
It is rare for a US refinery to push up against or exceed the US Environmental Protection Agency limit on soot, which is among the most harmful pollutants, according to a Reuters examination of tests results since 2017.
Soot from St. Charles, which can process up to 215,000 bbl of crude oil every day, exceeded the federal limit during August pollution tests, sometimes by as much as 10% to 20%. Soot at that refinery has escalated since 2017, according to results from stack tests, used to measure fine particle pollution. Valero did not return messages seeking comment.
Currently, plants are required to restrict soot emissions to 1 pound or less for every 1,000 pounds of coke burned in a refinery's catalytic cracking units.
As MRC informed previously, San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp, the second-largest US oil refiner plans to run its 14 refineries at between 88% and 92% of their combined capacity of 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) in the fourth quarter.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,868,160 tonnes in the first nine months of 2021, up by 18% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,138,510 tonnes in January-September 2021, up by 30% year on year. Supply of propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) decreased significantly.
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