Much of the crude oil that’s shipped under Wisconsin through pipelines, and some of the oil that’s carried across the Badger State on trains, winds up at a refinery just east of Chicago in Whiting, Indiana. The facility is operated by BP — the oil and gas company formerly known as British Petroleum — and is the largest refinery in the Midwest.
It’s also a site of concern to neighbors and to groups worried about Lake Michigan.
The massive 126-year-old plant was modernized a few years ago to process heavier crude oil, like tar sands oil from Canada. While BP decided not to meet with a group of reporters touring the area last week with the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, Thomas Frank, who lives in the nearby community of East Chicago, pointed out the refinery’s key structures: tall pipes “flaring” (burning) what the company calls waste gas, and an oil processor called a coker, which Frank claimed is the second-largest in the world. He also pointed out the site’s distillation tower, which he claimed is the world’s largest.
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BP said the Whiting refinery can generate up to 19 million gallons of refined products every day. But the making of all that gasoline, jet fuel and other substances has brought with it some controversy. Frank said BP is pressuring residents of a historic East Chicago neighborhood called Marktown just a half-mile east of the plant to sell their homes and move.
“We can read the tea leaves,” he said. “I think they’re mitigating against future risk — whether it’s … environmental or if there’s an explosion here.”
Just a few hundred yards from the BP refinery, the waves of Lake Michigan crash on a beach where up to 1,600 gallons of oil leaked from the plant into the water last year. Local citizens have criticized that leak, and are also unhappy about the amount of mercury the refinery is allowed to discharge into the lake from its wastewater treatment plant.
Cleanup crews responding to an oil spill at the Whiting refinery in March of 2014. Coast Guard News (CC-BY-SA)
A close up of petroleum coke, a byproduct produced at the BP refinery. Roman M. (CC-BY-SA)
Bruno Pigott with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management said BP got a variance from mercury discharge rules because the technology wasn’t there to do better. The company, however, is now supposed to be working to capture more mercury.
“Each time they come up for renewal, there’s a re-examination of the limit in the permit. And the goal is that each time we do that, there’s a progressive reduction in the limit in order eventually to get to reach the water quality standard of 1.3 parts per trillion,” said Piggot.
Piggot said that for now, tests of nearby fish show mercury levels are steady. However, longtime Whiting resident Carolyn Marsh called the state’s approach unacceptable and ridiculous.
“You don’t bring in tar sands without having the technology ready to deal with this kind of discharge,” said Marsh.
The BP site also produces a black, powdery byproduct called petroleum coke, also known as petcoke. Much of it is shipped a few miles to the southeast side of Chicago.
There, tanker trucks have to spray river water to help keep down the petcoke dust at a huge storage yard owned by Koch Industries — the multinational corporation overseen by sibling billionaires Charles and David Koch. Tall water cannons also spray the large black piles, which are eventually shipped to be burned at power plants. Air monitors have been installed at the yard as well.
Koch Industries spokesman Jake Reint said more improvements are coming to hopefully satisfy nearby residents.
“We’re working really hard to make sure that they understand what we’re doing at this site, and hopefully that we’re being a good neighbor, but we have to continue to earn their trust,” said Reint.
That trust that isn’t there yet for neighborhood activist Olga Bautista.
“Forget about the Koch brothers and their petcoke and BP,” she said. “We can’t work together. It doesn’t work that way.”
Besides the local controversies, climate change activists don’t like the air pollution the BP refinery puts out over Lake Michigan or the site’s carbon footprint.
BP says that it employs 1,900 people in Indiana, and that the refinery supplies hundreds of retail stations.
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