Oil companies say they take pollution concerns seriously

Oil field operations around West Texas received the majority of the blame for pollution-releasing incidents cited in the Environmental Integrity Project and Environment Texas report, “Breakdowns In Enforcement” issued early this month.

Citing state records, the two environmental groups said there were 2,004 “upset” incidents because of equipment malfunctions or maintenance that released 34 million pounds of pollution last year in the Texas Commission On Environmental Quality’s Midland District 7.

Three of the companies cited in the report offered their responses.

Hess Corp.’s Amerada Hess Seminole Gas Processing Plant was cited in the report as the top air polluter, responsible for more than 5.8 million pounds of pollution, or about 10 percent of all illegal pollution in Texas last year.

“Hess is aware of the report and takes the issue of managing emissions from plant upsets seriously,” Rob Young, senior communications manager, said in an email. “This is why we have been undertaking significant capital upgrades at the Seminole gas plant to enhance reliability and prevent future unplanned shut-downs and operational upsets.”

Young said the company’s capital improvement program has seen around $20 million in upgrades implemented at the plant, including $4 million on an upgraded control system in 2016. He cited additional incentives, including a plant-wide safety instrumentation system, an upgraded burner management system and upgraded software on the company’s compressors.

“We have also implemented an enhanced maintenance program as well as new training programs for our operations staff that focus on preventive measures.” he said. “This comes on top of our efforts to implement new procedures for testing critical functions and equipment, and retaining a specialist service company to support our efforts.”  

Ranked third on the report’s list was ConocoPhillips’ Howard Glasscock Sour Gas Injection Facility, and incidents at its Chalk Battery North and Chalk Battery South plants were also cited in the report. The report said the company emitted more than 2.1 million pounds of illegal pollution last year.

“ConocoPhillips is continuously looking for ways to operate safely, efficiently, and in an environmentally responsible manner,” Romelia Hinojosa, ConocoPhillips spokesperson, said in an email. “We self-report every upset that leads to emissions as required by Texas regulations. The emissions have to be first reported within 24 hours and are often based on conservative assumptions. We believe that our actual emissions are much lower than the reported numbers. We are currently reviewing the numbers and will resubmit corrected totals to the TCEQ, if the numbers differ. While ConocoPhillips has a permit from TCEQ to operate the facility, typically, the permits do not include upset and malfunction emissions.

“The reason for the numbers you see in the report is that we experienced many operational issues when we commissioned the facility in 2015,” she said. “When the facility operates without any upsets, the emissions from the facility are very small, as is the case in 2017.”

She said that before building and commissioning the plant, the company had Title V air permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that allowed it to flare the sour gas at the producing sites.

“Generally, the flaring occurred when third party gas processing facilities were unavailable or had issues,” Hinojosa said. “However, we wanted to avoid having to flare sour gas at the producing sites when the third party gas processing facilities were not available. So in 2015, ConocoPhillips spent several million dollars to construct the Howard Glasscock Sour Gas Injection Facility. This injection facility takes the produced gas from the field, removes the sulfur compounds, and sends the sweet or sulfur-free gas to third party processing facilities; the remaining sulfur-rich, sour gas generated during the sweetening process is compressed and injected underground into the formation from where it originated.

“During the commissioning stage of the facility in 2015, we experienced many operational issues, which prevented us from being able to remove the sulfur compounds from the produced gas,” she said. “As a result, we had to flare the gas at the facility or at the Chalk North and South producing sites, which are mentioned in the report. In addition, we had some issues with operating the injection well, which resulted in us having to flare the sour gas generated in the sweetening unit.

“As the facility issues were resolved, the emissions due to flaring at the facility and in the field have significantly decreased. The EIP report shows that emissions decreased from 2015 to 2016. Since then, the facility’s emissions have continued to decrease and have decreased drastically from 2016 to 2017, when the commissioning was successfully completed,” Hinojosa said.

DCP Midstream ranked fourth on the report’s list, emitting more than 1.14 million pounds of pollution from its Goldsmith Gas Plant.

“DCP has dramatically reduced its excess emissions in the past two years, and we are strongly focused on continuing to improve our reliability,” Roslyn Elliott, DCP Midstream spokesperson, said in an email.