Benzene! Why Don’t the Environmentalists Boycott Citgo like they did Exxon?

By Mick Gregory

There is one oil company that laughs off EPA rules. Which one? Citgo, subsidiary of OPEC member PDVSA. It’s a hostile foreign company spewing emissions and violating fundamental public safety rules.

Two massive vats of oil, each capable of holding 12 million gallons, sat uncovered in Corpus Christi’s sprawling refinery row for at least 12 years, releasing unknown quantities of toxic benzene into the air. Benzene is among the most dangerous carcinogens known to mankind.

Last August, the U.S. Justice Department leveled a 10-count criminal indictment against Citgo Petroleum Corp. and the environmental manager of its Corpus East plant, alleging the refinery released tons more of the cancer-causing chemical than allowed by law in 2001 and 2002 — while company officials knowingly underreported the emissions.

But state regulators have been trying unsuccessfully to force Citgo to install lids and pollution-control systems since 1999, according to a review of thousands of pages of regulatory documents obtained by the San Antonio Express-News under state open records laws.

The review revealed that the refinery’s pollution issues go back much further than the indictment shows. State regulators, documents indicate, seemed to exert little influence over the the refinery’s operation, and enforcement efforts often dragged on and on, letting the company operate with violations for years before paying fines.

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality records show that the refinery spewed tons more benzene than permitted not just in 2001 and 2002, as the federal indictment charges, but also in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

(William Luther/San Antonio Express-News)
Kelly Arkadie talks with environmental advocate Suzie Canales as Canales tours the area around Citgo’s Corpus East refinery in Corpus Christi. Canales’ sister died of cancer after living in a Corpus neighborhood built on a landfill full of oil industry waste.
CITGO INDICTMENT
Document: The 16-page indictment

The federal government has criminally indicted Citgo Petroleum Corp. and Philip Vrazel, the environmental manager of Citgo’s Corpus East Plant, for a series of pollution-related violations. If convicted, Citgo faces fines of up to $500,000 or twice the gross economic gain (whichever is greater) and five years of probation. Vrazel faces fines of up to $500,000 and up to five years in prison.

The charges are:

Two counts of violating of the National Emission Standard for benzene waste operations.
Two counts of operating open top tanks as oil-water separators without first installing the emission controls required by federal and state regulations.
Failing to identify in its 2000 report filed with the state all of the points in the refinery wastewater system where benzene was generated.
Five counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a result of birds landing in the open oil tanks.
After years of wrangling between regulators and oil company officials, lids now are being installed on the tanks. The work is scheduled for completion this year.

But the drawn-out process has fueled the ire of local residents and others around Texas who long have accused state environmental regulators of being soft on polluters — a charge underscored in a 2003 state auditor’s report that found it was significantly less expensive for the industry to pay fines for polluting in Texas than to comply with the law.

“They’re not afraid of the TCEQ,” said Suzie Canales, an environmental advocate whose sister died of cancer after living in a Corpus neighborhood built on a landfill full of oil industry waste. “It’s like my 4-year-old grandson. He won’t do what I tell him because he knows I won’t do anything.”

Little action

In fact, state regulators did cite Citgo for a dizzying array of violations, filing report after report and levying a fine every two or three years since 1999. But an analysis of the records shows how slow such a process can be.
The state first asked the company to equip the two massive tanks with roofs and pollution controls in 1999 as part of an inspection that netted about 50 violations at the plant. That case was combined with two others, bringing the total to 76 violations, said Mary Risner, the TCEQ’s director of litigation.

Citgo fought all 76. And when the case was finally settled in 2002, regulators fined the company $750,000 but dropped the violation regarding the tanks. There simply wasn’t enough evidence to force the point during the three years, the state argued, and the oil company fought the charge hard.

Citgo has long argued that the tanks were being erroneously treated as oil-water separators and didn’t need the lids or pollution-control equipment. In its written response to the federal indictment, the oil company claims to have an Environmental Protection Agency memorandum and expert legal advice to back its claim.

Citgo officials did not respond to calls or e-mails for comment for this story, but vehemently denied any wrongdoing in a written statement that termed the federal charges “unprecedented.”

Federal prosecutors, though, paint a starkly different picture in the indictment, citing company documents from the early 1990s that refer to the tanks as oil-water separators and, when discussing the environmental problems posed by the tanks, conclude that “installing floating roofs on tanks 116 and 117 is a sure fix for environmental compliance purposes, but it may not be the most cost effective option.”

Despite what federal prosecutors claim Citgo knew, company officials were able to convince state regulators that they could not be forced to cover the tanks and add pollution-control equipment. After acquiescing and pulling the issue from its 1999 case, state regulators added it to another massive enforcement case in 2001.

That case involved 17 violations and was settled in 2004 with a $1.74 million penalty and the understanding that, among other things, Citgo would either take tanks 116 and 117 out of service or not use them as oil-water separators unless proper pollution control was installed.

The job, according to Citgo documents, should be complete this year.

Dragged on too long

Neil Carman, clean air director for the Lone State Chapter of the Sierra Club said, “All of these benzene violations are serious violations.”

Jerome Bradford, 64, lived most of his life in the Oak Park Triangle, a neighborhood hemmed in by refineries on two sides and Interstate 37 on the third. Citgo bought out residents in the late 1990s after a series of refinery explosions and contamination problems caused an outcry. Bradford’s father died of prostate cancer in 1993, about five years before the son took the buyout.
“The power of the refinery is something else,” he said. “They got it going on, brother. They got it going on.”

The biggest worry among nearby residents is benzene, a common pollutant naturally found in crude oil. Prolonged exposures at high levels can cause cancer, including leukemia, and other health problems.

One of the local air monitors — located in the now-abandoned Oak Park area — routinely shows the highest or among the highest levels of benzene of any monitors in the state. And this isn’t the first time the federal government has stepped into this coastal Texas city with criminal charges against a local refinery because of benzene pollution.

Hiding and misreporting benzene pollution was the central theme of a massive criminal indictment the federal government brought against Koch Petroleum Group LP in 2000. A year later, Koch agreed to pay a $10 million fine and conduct $10 million worth of environmental projects to settle the case.

Despite the danger posed by benzene, there are no hard regulatory standards for the amount that can be in the air in Texas — only screening levels that act as a sort of guideline.

State toxicologist Michael Honeycutt said those guidelines are enforced by permits that limit the amount of benzene a facility can emit. He acknowledges that the method breaks down when refineries knowingly exceed those permit levels, as is charged in the Citgo and Koch cases.

“There are good companies. There are bad companies and there are ignorant companies,” he said. “Some work hard to do the right thing and some hire good attorneys.”

The state’s screening level for benzene is a yearly average of one part per billion. The monitor in the Oak Park Triangle has been above that level since it was installed in 1997 — running more than double in 2002, 2003 and 2004 before dropping to 1.7 last year.

Another monitor in the nearby Hillcrest neighborhood has normally been below the screening level, but nudged just over it last year.

Although the benzene is over the state screening levels, Honeycutt said it really doesn’t pose a major threat, particularly because the Oak Park neighborhood is now abandoned. Even if it weren’t, levels at the Oak Park monitor are roughly equal to those found in a home of someone who routinely parks a car in the garage.

The state’s heath-screening levels are based on the theoretical risk of one person in 100,000 getting cancer over a lifetime. Benzene levels of two double that risk. Benzene levels of three triple the risk, and so on.

“If those numbers were 10 or 15 I’d say, ‘Oh, yeah, we need to be down there,’” Honeycutt said.

Harold Branch, a retired teacher and environmentalist said, “They have polluted the area and so many people have died of cancer and other related diseases.”

This is a crime that makes the Exxon Valdez accidental tanker oil spill look like spilled milk. In the Valdeze case, the cleanup was immediate and thorough, and the environmentalists still called for a boycott of Exxon.

In this case, Citgo has ignored basic environmental laws and paid minute fines rather than comply.

Where are the environmentalists now? Instead we see Joe Kennedy speaking on behalf of Citgo.

Follow the money.