Texas Petrochemicals Must Spend $20M to Clean Houston Air

Texas Petrochemicals, LLC has committed to invest $20 million in additional pollution controls to enhance the environmental performance at its plant near the Houston Ship Channel.

Further, the company agreed to pay the stipulated penalties if it does not reduce volatile organic compounds that result from emissions events during the five-year period of the order.

These emissions were revealed by fence line monitoring voluntarily installed by Texas Petrochemicals in 2006.

Air quality is poor in the Houston Ship Channel, which is lined with refineries and chemical plants. (Photo by Thomas Millard)

Texas Petrochemicals has the largest butadiene and butene-1 extraction capacity in North America. The company is one of North America's largest producers of isobutylene and its derivatives, such as polyisobutylene, diisobutylene, high purity isobutylene and isobutylene concentrate.

The company says combined production for its 256-acre site near the Houston Ship Channel is in excess of 1.5 billion pounds of chemicals per year.

The facility produces chemicals that go into the manufacture of synthetic rubber, nylon, adhesives, catalysts and additives that become tires, carpets, and gasoline additives among other items.

On June 9, 2005, Texas Petrochemicals entered into a Voluntary Emissions Reduction Agreement with the state designed to reduce emissions of butadiene at the plant through the use of a flare gas recovery system, enhanced leak detection and repair efforts and the installation and operation of a fenceline monitoring system.

The agreement also covered improved butadiene rail car loading and infrared camera emissions detection technology.

The company's investment in fence line monitoring is already paying off for the Houston airshed, the commission said in a statement.

As a result of enhanced detection by the fence line monitors and Texas Petrochemicals' quicker response to emissions events, emissions from the flare decreased 90 percent.

Volatile organic compounds, contributors to ozone, decreased from 230,000 pounds per year in 2004 to 26,000 pounds per year in 2007.

Butadiene from the flare decreased from an average of 54,000 pounds per year to 5,300 pounds per year during the same period.

"This innovative, progressive approach is an excellent example of how government and industry can work together to attain common goals by building on success,” said Commissioner Bryan Shaw, PhD.

"We commend Texas Petrochemicals for taking the lead and will evaluate the data documenting improvement to determine the best ways to foster similar agreements in the future," he said.

The commission will continue to study the results to determine how to engage other companies in similar agreements in order to apply funds to solve problems before they occur, rather than penalize failure after emissions are released into the atmosphere.

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