EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) is requiring Illinois regulators to conduct a new review to determine the adequacy of emission limits for a refinery expansion, marking a win for environmentalists' broader campaign targeting refinery expansions intended to process fuel from tar sands.
The Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council challenged a state permit for a ConocoPhillips
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refinery expansion for tar sands processing, arguing the facility's use of the fuel would increase emissions of sulfur oxides (SOx), volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide (CO).
The suit is one of several efforts by environmentalists, as well as EPA enforcement officials, to impose stricter requirements on domestic refinery plans to expand their operations to process fuel from tar sands. The fuel, which is derived from an energy-intensive process, is proving to be controversial. With geologic deposits spread over thousands of acres in Alberta, Canada, industry supporters argue it can provide a plentiful and secure supply of crude. However, environmentalists say the fuel results in significantly higher greenhouse gas (GHG) and other emissions than petroleum and are challenging scores of proposed permits for refinery expansions to accommodate supplies of tar sands.
In the June 2 ruling in In re: ConocoPhillips
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Co., the EAB denies parts of the groups' challenge, but remands the permit back to Illinois on several grounds, including reconsideration of CO limits for flares. The board stopped short of ruling on the adequacy of the limits, but the board said the state's basis for the flare emission limits appeared to be lacking. Relevant documents are available on InsideEPA.com.
"Most significantly, we also find the record and the briefs devoid of any basis for the specific emissions limits set for each flare, and as such have no record basis for determining whether the limits reflect the greatest degree of reduction achievable after the considering the factors enumerated in the statute," the ruling says.
Environmentalists had also challenged regulators' failure to set GHG limits in the permit but the board rejected the issue on procedural grounds, saying environmentalists had not made the arguments in a timely fashion.
Without mentioning the EAB decision, environmentalists signaled on a June 4 conference call with reporters that they will broaden their campaign to challenge refinery expansion permits. Activists from the EIP and Environmental Defence Canada said they plan to focus challenges on pollutants such as sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides, lead and nickel, which occur in higher levels in tar sands oil.
According to a just-issued report by the groups, Tar Sands: Feeding U.S. Refinery Expansions With Dirty Fuel, tar sands oil contains 11 times more sulfur, six times more nitrogen, 11 times more nickel and five times more lead than conventional oil. EIP Executive Director Eric Schaeffer said environmentalists have a strong legal case to argue that there is no way to refine tar sands oil in an environmentally acceptable way. "This is a very intensely wasteful way to feed an oil habit," he said.
The groups also vowed to continue to fight for GHG limits in EPA's new source performance standards and new source review regulations, although they have not yet had success with these efforts. The primary source of increased GHG emissions is caused by extraction in Canada, but the groups plan to target U.S. tar sands oil GHGs because they believe refineries will need to use more energy -- and emit more carbon dioxide -- to refine the heavy oil.
The environmental groups also said they would lobby Congress for policies that would improve energy efficiency and fuel efficiency, and they said they would support a low carbon fuel standard that would account for extraction emissions. In addition, members of the group said they would push for full implementation of a controversial portion of the 2007 energy law, called section 526, that would effectively bar the government from purchasing fuel from tar sands.
The development of the tar sands has soared as the price of oil has exceeded the $70 per barrel to $95 per barrel tipping point at which tar sands oil becomes profitable, the activists say. Exploitation of oil shale in the United States will likely follow close on the heels of the use of Canadian tar sands, the activists say.Inside EPA
