Exxon Mobil will shell out $300 million outfitting eight energy facilities in Texas and Louisiana with technology that monitors and controls air pollution, as part of a settlement with the U.S. government announced by the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday.
The Irving, Texas oil company’s settlement with the EPA and other agencies comes after it faced allegations that it failed to monitor flaring at Gulf Coast petrochemical facilities, potentially violating the Clean Air Act.
The EPA said the anti-pollution equipment will curb harmful pollution from 26 industrial flares at five of the company’s facilities in Texas, near Baytown, Beaumont and Mont Belvieu, and three others in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Exxon has agreed to cut down on waste gases it sends through its flares and improve the efficiency of the flares. The project could reduce the company’s emissions of volatile organic compounds by 7,000 tons a year, and curb toxic air pollutants like benzene by 1,500 tons a year.
“This settlement means cleaner air for communities across Texas and Louisiana, and reinforces EPA’s commitment to enforce the law and hold those who violate it accountable,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a written statement.
Exxon will pay a $2.5 million civil penalty as part of its settlement with the EPA, the Justice Department and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. It also agreed to pay $1 million on a project planting trees in Baytown.
In April, a federal judge in Houston ordered Exxon to pay a civil penalty of almost $20 million for releasing 10 million pounds of pollutants into the air from its Baytown refining and chemical complex over the course of eight years.
“Exxon has been breaking the law and polluting our air for too long,” Environment Texas Director Luke Metzger said in a statement on Tuesday, praising the settlement.
“Today’s announcement means they’ll finally have to make plant upgrades they should have made a long time ago.”
This first appeared on the Houston Chronicle – an Energy Voice content partner. For more click here.
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