American 

Fuel & Petrochemical 

Manufacturers 

1667 K Street, NW 

Suite700 

Washington, DC 

20006 

STATEMENT OF THE AMERICAN FUEL & PETROCHEMICAL MANUFACTURERS 

ON THE PROPOSED REFINERY RISK AND TECHNOLOGY REVIEW RULE 

AUGUST 5, 2014 
AFPM appreciates the opportunity today to discuss our views on the EPA's proposed refinery 

Risk and Technology Review rule. The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers 

("AFPM") is a national trade association of more than 400 companies, including virtually all U.S. 

refiners and petrochemical manufacturers. AFPM members operate 122 U.S. refineries 

comprising approximately 98% ofU.S. refming capacity. 

Air quality has improved significantly in the United States over the past three decades and our 

industry has been a significant contributor to this improvement. Since 1990, our industry has 

invested $137 billion to reduce emissions from our plants and make cleaner fuels. 

On the air toxics side, we have also made great strides in reducing emissions. Total hazardous air 

pollutants from the refining sector have been reduced by nearly two-thirds since 1990, while 

fugitive HAPs have been reduced by 79 percent and point-source HAP emissions have been 

reduced by nearly 40 percent1

• The results in Texas are just as encouraging. According to 

TCEQ, nitrogen oxide levels have been reduced by 63 percent and sulfur dioxide levels have been 

reduced by 50 percent from stationary sources from 2000-2012. Furthermore, 91 percent of 

benzene ambient monitors that were in operation from 2000 through 2012 have shown decreases 

overall. 

Despite these significant reductions, EPA is proposing some requirements in this rule that simply 

are not justified by the level of refinery risk that the Agency found in its analysis. EPA in its 

previous Risk and Technology Review rulemaking in 2008 determined that the risks posed by the 

1 Thomas P. Nelson, Sage Environmental Consulting, L.P, "An Examination of Historical Air Pollutant Emissions from 

US Petroleum Refineries," November 29, 2012. 

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refining industry to be acceptable and therefore no further actions were required. Although 

signed by the EPA Administrator, due to a change in administrations, that rule was never 

published in the Federal Register and was subsequently withdrawn. After EPA conducted a 

massive and unprecedented industry data collection effort from refiners in 2011, the risk levels 

found by EPA in its most recent analysis, performed for this rule, are similar to those found in 

2008, still within an acceptable range. One quarter of the refineries had maximum individual risk 

levels below one in a million and two-thirds had risk levels below 10 in a million. To give a 

perspective on risk levels, the odds of being hit by lightning in a given year are one in 960,000 

(National Weather Service). According to the National Safety Council the odds of dying in a 

passenger car in a single year are one in 21, 13 2 and the odds of dying as a pedestrian in a lifetime 

are one in 623. 

Unfortunately, we are faced with a rule with significant costs but with little or no health or 

environmental benefits. EPA estimates that this rule will cost $240 million, but our members 

estimate that it will cost in excess of a billion dollars. Of even greater concern is that the health 

benefit gains are insignificant by any measure, meaning this rule will have financial impacts to 

the economy with essentially no measureable benefits. 

Every refinery will be required to install fence line monitors at significant on-going cost. Yet, as I 

mentioned earlier, many of these refineries have very low levels of risk. We don't understand 

how imposing this one-size fits all approach to every refinery will improve public health, 

particularly when according to EPA analysis a number ofthese refineries pose no health risk to 

the surrounding communities. 

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The EPA rule proposes a rolling annual average benzene concentration action level of 2.8 parts 

per billion (ppb) at the refinery fence line, measured every two weeks from 20-30 samples 

collected around the refinery fenceline perimeter. Exceeding this "threshold" would trigger a root 

cause analysis and corrective action and could be deemed a violation by EPA. However, the 

threshold value is not an indicator of risk- the stated purpose of this monitoring is to check 

EPA's modeling of fugitive emissions. We fail to see how it can achieve this goal. Further, 

EPA's own studies in the mid-1990s confirmed no effect on personal exposure ofliving close to 

major fixed sources of benzene including oil refineries, chemical plants and storage tanks2

• 

We have concerns with the flaring provisions in this rule. The recently adopted NSPS Ja flare 

rules resulted in instrumentation costs on the order of millions of dollars per flare and will result 

in significant overall reductions in already very limited flaring emissions. This proposal would 

require significant additional costs over and above those from the Ja rule and yet has few 

synergies with the earlier Ja investments and results in very little incremental benefit. Any 

proposed flare combustion efficiency standards should (1) only address steam-assisted flares, (2) 

focus on oversteaming and (3) limit the need for the wasteful addition of natural gas to the flares. 

Pressure relief valves (PRVs) are designed to protect plant personnel, the public and equipment, 

and EPA should not change the MACT floor work practice for PRVs. PRVs relieve very 

infrequently and for short periods of time with very little total HAP emissions. While monitoring 

such releases to ensure that PRVs have properly closed makes sense and most companies already 

do so, prohibiting atmospheric releases will require routing PRVs to additional new flares. This 

2

Lance Wallace, EPA, "Environmental Exposure to Benzene: An Update," Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 

104, Supplement 6, December 1996 

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will require massive investments both for these new flares and for flare headers to control releases 

of rare events. 

EPA has greatly overstated the risks that coking units pose, and the proposed depressurization 

requirements go well beyond the new requirements set by the recently promulgated refinery 

NSPS rule. EPA has greatly underestimated the costs of controlling these emissions, controls that 

result in virtually no benefit. 

As part of this suite of proposed rules, EPA has attempted to implement the 2008 U.S. Court of 

Appeals vacatur ofthe startup, shutdown, and malfunction (SSM) provisions found in the MACT 

regulations. Unfortunately, EPA has interpreted the court ruling to mean that all instances of 

SSM must adhere to the same emission standards established for normal operations. Particularly 

in the case of malfunctions, this is a physical impossibility, and the enforcement that would result 

from this approach is the equivalent of having the police waiting for people at the auto repair shop 

every time something goes wrong with their car. We strongly urge the agency to re-assess their 

obligation to address SSM emissions by either revising the existing standards, which are not 

currently based on SSM events, or to craft separate standards to address those circumstances 

outside of normal operations. 

One final note regarding process. EPA reached a settlement agreement earlier this year that 

requires the rule to be completed 11 months after the rule was proposed in May. This simply does 

not allow enough time for everyone to properly review risk information and for EPA to finalize a 

rule that is defensible. In 2007-2008, EPA needed more than 18 months to complete the refinery 

RTR rule once it was proposed. Developing a good rule that properly determines risk and 

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addresses solutions to lower that risk is more important than meeting an artificial deadline. We 

hope that the Agency and the plaintiffs will reconsider the tight timeframe and suggest that the 

rule be finalized at a later date in 2015. This will make for a better result for everyone. 

Thank you again for this opportunity to speak and I am happy to answer any questions. 

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