Philadelphia Refinery Abandoned and Its Citizens (and Trade Union Members) Are Paying the Price

Guest Post by Jim Willis at Marcellus Drilling News.

Earlier this week, MDN told you about the final chapter in the tragedy of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) Refining Complex (see Sad Final Chapter to 2019 Philly Oil Refinery Fire: $4.2M Fine). Anti-fossil fuelers are dancing on the grave of the now defunct refinery, celebrating in the final humiliation of a $4.2 million fine by the federal EPA.

MDN friend Garland Thompson, a gifted reporter/writer who covers energy and technology issues for US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine, wrote to us to point out missing facts in recent media coverage of the plant fire and subsequent closure. He provides some much-needed/missing context.

By JudeFawley - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=146747042

Garland’s #1 point below floated through our heads as we were writing our post earlier this week, but we failed to mention it at the time. We thought, “We wonder when the facility was originally built. Antis are accusing the refinery of operating in people’s backyards, but what if it’s the other way around?”

And, indeed, according to Garland, who is a lifelong resident of Philadelphia and an expert on energy in the city, says it IS the other way around. The refinery was in that location long before housing developments sprang up near it. People chose to build homes and live near the facility, not the other way around.

Garland makes other great points in his email to us:

A few facts are missing from the reportage about Philadelphia Energy Solutions’ debacle:

1. The refinery was constructed and run in its South Philly location long before city resident neighborhoods arose there. So there was none of the arrogance [on the part of the refinery] implied in the quoted activist attorney’s remarks about “operating in someone’s backyard” at all.

2. The pipe section that failed was not made according to specifications in the refinery’s design. I wrote to The Inquirer’s Andy Maykuth, who covered the story, asking whether that pipe was sourced directly from the refinery’s builder, Babcock & Wilcox, or had it come from a subcontractor. Unfortunately, that information was unavailable.

3. Specific inspections aside, that wrongfully installed section of pipe lasted for decades, and Energy Transfer bought the refinery after most of those decades had gone by. If responsibility for the many years’ time is to be laid at Energy Transfer Partners’ door, that’s the wrong target. That company purchased a working plant with a record of decades of safe operation in the “backyard” of the neighbors who arrived long after its inception. Damning Energy Transfer for failing to dig into the condition of a section of the plant Gulf Oil operated until it exited the business, when ETP had no reason to anticipate danger, is just wasteful grandstanding.

4. Energy Transfer was the owner-operator when that faulty pipe section let go, to be sure. But had ETP’s leadership elected to use its million-dollar insurance policy to repair and upgrade the East Coast’s biggest refinery instead of declaring bankruptcy and walking away, that refinery would be raking in profits from today’s high demand for jet fuel, ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel for truck transport, but also for bunkering [ship] fuel after the International Maritime Organization’s mandate [regarding] ships crossing the oceans to deliver so much of the produce, meats, consumer products and metals imports sold into the American economy.

5. [Journalist] Andy Maykuth and others celebrating Philadelphia Energy Solution’s demise crowed in public media reports that Delaware Valley consumers didn’t experience the shortage of petrol for their automobiles some analysts expected from the closing of the refinery that supplied half of all the fuel used on the East Coast. Maykuth and his colleagues forgot to mention that the necessary energy supplies now come from foreign producers. The union leaders, angry at the loss of high-wage jobs, tried to point out that buying from offshore suppliers merely scrubbed dollars out of the U.S. economy, but no one seemed to be listening.*

Now, you have the full context to better understand the tragedy of closing the PES refinery.

#Philadelphia #GarlandThompson #UnionJobs #Maykuth #EnergyTransfer #Pennsylvnia #Marcellus DrillingNews