Houston, 8 September (Argus) — US prosecutors have accused Pelican Refining, which intermittently operates a 30,000 b/d refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana, of felony Clean Air violations and obstruction of justice.
The company faces two criminal counts of Clean Air Act violations and a third count of obstruction of justice, according to a filing made on 6 September with the US Court in the Western District of Louisiana.
The charges go back to 2005, shortly after the then-mothballed plant was purchased for $9mn by a joint venture company between Nucoastal Refining & Marketing and Bayoil USA – two firms tied to oilman Oscar Wyatt and trader David Chalmers, respectively. Both men later went to prison in connection with the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal after being accused of paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime for crude contracts.
Prosecutors in federal filings about Pelican Refining described flagrant violations, including staff at the refinery who would relight a process flare needed to burn off potentially explosive hydrogen sulfide using a signal flare gun purchased at Wal-Mart and using plastic children's pools to catch leaks at the facility. They alleged Pelican Refinery knowingly continued to operate despite being in violation of emissions laws and missing deadlines to conduct repairs and then knowingly made false entries in documents to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality with the intent to impede investigation, according to the filing.
The refinery, which mostly ran heavy sour crude offloaded from barges on the Calcasieu waterway to make asphalt, had no process for reporting hydrogen sulfide emissions, regularly bypassed a caustic scrubber designed to remove hydrogen sulfide and regularly employed broken crude storage tanks, according to filings. Neighbors surrounding the facility complained of the smell of hydrogen sulfide – a fatal gas in high doses, according to federal filings. At one point, an extremely high and potentially lethal reading of 851ppm of the gas was taken at the facility's dock, one filing said.
It was not immediately clear whether the company had an attorney. Pelican Refining vice-president and general manager Byron Hamilton pleaded guilty to federal negligent endangerment charges on 6 July. Hamilton has cooperated with the investigation, according to federal filings related to his plea agreement.
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