Shell's Deer Park Refinery Emissions Draw Legal Action

The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring Shell to end its Clean Air Act violations. In addition, Shell faces civil penalties of up to $32,500 per day for each violation of the Clean Air Act. Shell Oil Company is an affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell, ranked by "Fortune" magazine as the third largest company in the world.

Shell's Deer Park facility is a 1,500 acre complex located on the Houston Ship Channel in Harris County, about 20 miles east of downtown Houston. It is the nation's eighth largest oil refinery and one of the world's largest producers of petrochemicals.

Shell's Deer Park refinery (Photo credit unknown)

The facility is also the second largest source of air pollution in Harris County, which ranks among the worst in the nation in several measures of air quality.

"I live and work downwind from Shell, in Channelview. My family and my employees simply can't afford to breathe in any more air pollution," said Sierra Club member and small business owner Karla Land. "We have laws to protect air quality for a reason. Shell is breaking those laws and they need to be made to stop."

The Clean Air Act contains a "citizen suit" provision that allows private citizens affected by violations of the law to bring an enforcement suit in federal court if state and federal regulators do not.

"On average of more than once a week for at least the past five years, Shell has reported that it violated its own permit limits by spewing a wide range of harmful pollutants into the air around the Deer Park plant," said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. "Because the state of Texas and the U.S. EPA have both failed to put a stop to these blatant violations, ordinary citizens are stepping up to enforce the law themselves."

Shell's permits contain both hourly and yearly limits on the amounts of pollutants it can emit into the atmosphere. The lawsuit alleges that equipment breakdowns, malfunctions, and other non-routine incidents at the Deer Park complex result in the release of millions of pounds of pollutants into the surrounding air, frequently in violation of legal limits.

A single such "upset" or "emission event" can result in the release of thousands of pounds of air pollutants in a matter of minutes or hours. Some emission events at Shell Deer Park have involved pollutant releases in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

It is the first case in Texas in which citizen groups are suing to stop air emissions arising from so-called "upset" events.

According to the groups' analysis of Shell's own reports to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, air pollutants released during upsets at Deer Park since 2003 include:

• Over two million pounds of sulfur dioxide


• Over one million pounds of volatile organic compounds, VOCs


• Over 600,000 pounds of carbon monoxide


• Over 250,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides


• Over 90,000 pounds of benzene and 60,000 pounds of 1,3-butadiene

The company said Tuesday, "Shell Deer Park refining and chemical share the goal of the Sierra Club and Environment Texas to improve air quality."

"We have a record of continuous improvement in environmental performance achieved through significant investment in emission reduction projects and heightened employee focus on preventing operational incidents," the company said in a statement.

Shell gave examples including "a 14 percent reduction in reported benzene air emissions in 2006 compared with 2005, and a 67 percent reduction in flaring incidents from our Olefins operations between 2005 and 2007."

"In December, we met with the law firm representing the environmental groups," Shell said. "We are committed to an ongoing dialogue with them to discuss their concerns, our operations and the steps we are taking to further reduce emissions."

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