Here is update on battle between States (Texas) Rights vs. EPA Fed Rights …….. and this surrender by Flint Hills (Koch) Corpus Refinery moves line closer to EPA. Until now Koch has been standing up to Obama administration on several issues that threaten oil industry, who would think their Corpus plant would become the “Judas goat” for the EPA’s case.
The EPA position is making leaping claim that Refineries/MFG plants must now have point source emissions instead of an umbrella emissions for the whole plant. Only bureaucrats and states without refineries (some 39 vs. 8 that do with few in middle) would even consider this. Most of emissions are below monitoring levels and are actually calculated and a complex refinery often includes large number of units that make the task a nightmare. It has been the Rosetta stone for anit-industry folks to impose because it is a path to closing the 60-100 year old facilities that have been prevented from building new plants for 3 decades now.
It will also be as bad for ongoing emissions as the last over-reach by EPA when they claimed construction that replaced existing units with new ones must now be considered New Source and be approved / repermitted ….. which ended up costing refiners millions in extra cost and fines.
When anyone address the loss of jobs, and the inability of US to meet foreign competition, someone needs to point out that having the EPA taking its guidance from rabid environmental groups that are anti-fossil industry needs to be at the top of that list. California has been the breeding ground for these groups and for useless and costly regulations that have been closing a number of their own refineries only to keep them from closing and force a sale in order to avoid supply crisis.
Regards
