Houston plant’s owner enters multimillion-dollar settlement with EPA
Ohio-based natural gas processor MPLX LP agreed to a settlement worth millions of dollars to resolve purported violations of federal and state clean-air laws, including at the MarkWest Houston plant in Chartiers Township.
MPLX – a subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum Corp. which bought MarkWest Energy three years ago – and various subsidiaries entered a consent decree Thursday with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to pay a $925,000 fine and spend millions of dollars more to install new emissions monitoring equipment and upgrade pollution controls at 20 of its processing plants.
The agreement concerns violations the agency accused the company of committing at the Houston plant and a facility in Evans City, Butler County, plus others in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Texas and Oklahoma. All of the plants were part of MPLX’s purchase of MarkWest.
EPA officials said the problems at issue in the settlement included “control of emissions from equipment leaks, pressure relief devices, storage tanks, truck and railcar loading, combustion devices, and process heaters.”
Documents filed with the consent decree show that environmental officials who made a 2015 visit to the Houston site said the company failed to properly monitor some equipment, so that leak rates were greater than those MarkWest had reported itself.
Other violations the inspectors’ visit turned up were deficiencies in monitoring and record-keeping.
Aside from the fine, MPLX consented to spend about $2.78 million on additions and upgrades to its equipment for controlling emissions of volatile organic compounds at its processing plants.
“This agreement will eliminate harmful air pollutants and create cleaner air for communities in six states,” said Susan Bodine, EPA assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance. “By improving air pollution control at 20 of their gas processing facilities, MPLX will reduce VOC emissions by more than 1,500 tons a year.”
MPLX also plans to spend at least $700,000 at two natural gas compressor stations in Pennsylvania and Ohio for new equipment to control emissions during truck-loading operations.
MPLX also will spend $2.5 million for air-monitoring stations near four natural gas processing plants in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Texas.
The company also plans to fund a $75,000 study of computer-predictive modeling of fugitive leaks as a possible emission-reduction tool.