Aging plants that process a byproduct of crude oil refining into vital metals feedstocks exist in a gap of federal pollution oversight, allowing the facilities to have an outsized impact on localized air and water pollution in Louisiana, Texas and two other states, an activist environmental watchdog says.
Known as petroleum coke calcining plants, these 13 facilities in Baton Rouge, Gramercy, Chalmette and elsewhere were among the leading emitters of sulfur dioxide, hydrochloric acid, fine particulates and the heavy metals nickel and vanadium into the air in their parishes or counties in 2022, the group has found.
The Environmental Integrity Project analyzed state and federal air and water discharge data from 2022 and air and water permits to draw conclusions that track with other state and federal reporting in Louisiana from earlier years.
For seven of the past nine years, for instance, the Oxbow Calcining facility located between Baton Rouge and Port Hudson was the No. 1 individual emitter of sulfur dioxide into the air of any facility in Louisiana, state emissions data show.
A byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, sulfur dioxide can lead to smog and react with other chemicals in the air to make tiny particles that can go deep into the lungs and even the bloodstream, causing long-term respiratory and cardiac problems, the EPA says.
Most of the facilities are located near disadvantaged communities, and the majority near those communities are without some baseline air pollution controls, the group found.
The facilities, which further refine what is known as petroleum coke, or "petcoke," also released heavy metals into waterways without monitoring or discharge limits, the group's analysis of permit records claims.
"Petcoke processing is part of a dangerous industrial production chain that accelerates climate change and perpetuates continued drilling for oil," Nadia Steinzor, policy and research analyst with the group and lead author of the report, said in a statement. "It’s imperative for EPA to strengthen its pollution control standards and make sure the petcoke industry cleans up its act and stops causing terrible harm in the most vulnerable communities."
Using technology developed in the 1930s, petcoke calcining plants were built between 1935 and 1983 and, as a result, miss some bedrock EPA rules designed to reduce toxic, smog-inducing and fine particulate emissions, the Environmental Integrity Project report says. EPA hasn't created industry-specific rules to fill the gap.
In addition to writing the report issued late last month and sourced with 144 endnotes, the Environmental Integrity Project has pursued administrative action through the EPA with other groups against an Oxbow Calcining plant in Texas.
Dominique Joseph, EPA spokesman, said the agency is reviewing the group's report and will respond appropriately.
States could do more
While the states where these plants are located could be in a position to pick up EPA's purported slack, in Louisiana, state law has exempted the operations from state limits on toxic air emissions under exemptions for facilities that burn virgin fossil fuels, the group's analysis says.
The Environmental Integrity Project has also charged that state regulators have failed to use their own authority under the Clean Water Act to pursue tighter water pollution limits, citing the Rain CII complex in Gramercy as a case in point.
The plant discharges polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as well as nickel and vanadium into a ditch that winds up in the Blind River, according to the group, state permit records and federal toxics reporting.
A popular boating area in St. James with a public launch along Airline Highway, the river has already been deemed impaired and has fish consumption advisories due to mercury pollution from different sources.
State permit records show that Rain CII's latest water discharge permit for the Gramercy plant sets limits for standard water quality concerns, like suspended solids and potentially harmful bacteria, and also mercury.
But the permit, approved in August 2023, sets no limits for nickel and vanadium nor polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, though the company reports to the EPA that it was sending a few pounds per year of those chemicals into the water.
DEQ officials have not responded to requests for comment, including again on Aug. 5.
In addition to the plants in Baton Rouge, Gramercy and Chalmette, the other stand-alone petcoke calcining plant in the Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is in Norco.
Three of the plants are owned by Rain CII, a Connecticut-based company that is part of an Indian global concern. The other plant, in Baton Rouge, is Oxbow Calcining, owned by billionaire oil and gas industrialist and conservative activist William Koch.
The other three Louisiana plants are in the Lake Charles area.
Oxbow Calcining officials did not respond to requests for comment, including again on Aug. 5. Rain CII officials refused to comment on the report.
Bottom of the barrel
Petcoke is the solid, chemically inert tail-end product of the crude oil refining process.
It is left after lighter parts of crude, such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, naphtha and lubricants, are separated through refinery distillation and cracking, according to government and industry descriptions. The vast majority of petcoke straight from refineries, known as "green petcoke," is used as fuel for industry and some power plants.
The Environmental Integrity Project has focused on a different post-refinery stage of petcoke use, calcining. These plants heat and purify "green petcoke" in rotary kilns at 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit and make carbon-dense "calcined petcoke."
This rock- or coal-like material is used in aluminum smelting and brick, glass, steel and paint making, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
The association did not comment on the group's report, but, in a fact sheet, has noted that calcined petcoke provides feedstock for the only commercially viable methods of making anodes used in aluminum smelting.
The Environmental Integrity Project has called on the aluminum and calcining industries to pursue new, developing technologies more quickly that could eliminate calcining or cut its impact.
In a joint venture with global mining concern Rio Tinto, aluminum maker Alcoa announced a greenhouse gas-free method of making aluminum that uses new, proprietary inert anodes for the smelting process. Production at a demonstration plant in Quebec, Canada, isn't expected until 2027, Alcoa says.
In sustainability reports and other papers, Rain CII has also laid out plans to reduce its greenhouse gas and other emissions. It has developed petcoke pellets that can cut the need for raw petcoke and has proposed making them available in 2024.
Plants lack scrubbers, scrutiny
With large black piles of petcoke fines sitting in the shadow of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, the Rain CII plant in Gramercy is the leading source of sulfur dioxide and fine particulates in St. James Parish.
The plant has rivaled and even surpassed in some years fine particulate pollution from its more well-known neighbor, Atlantic Alumina's next-door Atalco Gramercy complex, which straddles the St. James/St. John line and reports its emissions in St. John, years of state data show.
The rust-red Atalco alumina facility next door has drawn continued regulatory and public scrutiny over dust and safety problems, while Rain CII has largely avoided the public eye.
"In such an extremely heavily industrialized area with large refineries, petrochemical plants, and then to have these — what some would consider smaller plants fly under the radar and 'what's the big deal of petcoke calcining' — and then you look at these numbers, and, you know, it's pretty shocking," Steinzor said.
Oxbow Calcining plant in Baton Rouge plant has similarly avoided much notice.
But the nonprofit environmental group's parish-level analysis of emissions data showed the plant dwarfed sulfur dioxide emissions from ExxonMobil's huge Baton Rouge refining and chemical complex and a few dozen other operations, contributing 95% of all sulfur dioxide emissions in 2022.
The Environmental Integrity Project says the Baton Rouge and Gramercy calcining plants lack standard scrubbers for sulfur dioxide, which can also work to cut hydrochloric acid emissions coming from the plants, but Oxbow has refused to install them.
The still partially coal-fired Big Cajun II power plant near New Roads and just up the Mississippi River from Oxbow Calcining saw sulfur dioxide emissions, though still significant, fall by half or more since 2015 after the plant installed scrubbers and made fuel and burner changes, state emissions data show.
The EPA forced the changes in the 2010s due to new federal air rules for the power plants and a settlement with the plant, according to the plant's then-owner.
Over the past decade and half, the EPA has also taken individual action against Rain CII's Chalmette plant, forcing it to install scrubbers after the agency found the plant was the primary reason St. Bernard Parish had fallen into nonattainment for sulfur dioxide pollution.
Despite improvements, the parish remains in nonattainment and the plant remained the parish's leading sulfur dioxide emitter in 2022, the environmental group found.
"The question is not, are they making their best effort, do they get 'A' for effort. The question is, are they controlling pollution sufficiently enough to protect public health and to reduce harm to the community and the environment," Steinzor said.