Opinion ID: 2671515
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Avgas Production and Waste Products

Text: Avgas consists of an ordinary gasoline base, blended with petroleum distillates and chemical additives. Alkylate is the most prevalent additive (at an amount of 25% to 40%) and is produced by alkylation, a process that uses 98% purity sulfuric acid as a catalyst. Because of the importance of avgas to the war effort, the WPB directed most available sulfuric acid to avgas production. Spent alkylation acid is a byproduct of alkylation, and has a lower acid content than sulfuric acid. During the relevant time period, spent alkylation acid could be (1) reprocessed to its former 98% acid percentage, (2) used to process other petroleum products, like motor gasoline and kerosene, or (3) discarded as waste. Treating other petroleum products with spent alkylation acid further diluted its acid content until it became “acid sludge,” which had acid levels of between 35% and 65%. Predictably, the Oil Companies’ success in increasing avgas production resulted in a corresponding increase in sulfuric acid consumption, which increased five-fold from 1941 to 1944. 5 Facilities to reprocess the spent alkylation 4 After the war, the new avgas production facilities’ usefulness was questionable; avgas consumption in the United States dropped to 70,000 barrels a day. Over time, however, the Oil Companies identified new uses for these facilities. The DSC was dissolved in 1945, and the RFC was dissolved in 1957, at which time the RFC transferred all relevant liabilities and obligations to the General Services Administration. See Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1957, 71 Stat. 647 (1957). 5 The increase in sulfuric acid use did not match the increase in avgas production because the Oil Companies 10 SHELL OIL COMPANY v. US acid did not increase apace, however. The Government twice refused applications to construct new acid processing facilities, and one of the facilities that did exist failed to operate at its design capacity. Moreover, the scarcity of available railroad tank cars (and the WPB’s refusal to make transportation of acid waste a priority) meant the Oil Companies were unable to transport acid sludge for reprocessing or other uses. See J.A. 565–66 (acid sludge could be used as fertilizer, but the scarcity of railroad tank cars prevented transporting acid sludge to the fertilizer plant). By late 1944 and 1945, the Oil Companies were unable to reuse the vast amounts of spent alkylation acid at their own refineries, and ultimately dumped much of it at the McColl site. Although dumping and burning acid waste were common before the war, the lack of reprocessing facilities and transportation options (and resulting bottleneck of acid waste) necessitated dumping and burning larger quantities of acid waste than ever before. The Oil Companies dumped waste at the McColl site from 1942 until shortly after the war ended. Approximately 12% of the waste was spent alkylation acid, and another 82.5% was acid sludge resulting from chemical treatment of other petroleum products. The remaining 5.5% was acid sludge arising from treatment of Government-owned benzol, for which the Government was held liable in the CERCLA litigation. Only the non-benzol waste (i.e., the spent alkylation acid and the remaining acid sludge) is at issue in this case. Shell contributed most of the acid waste at the McColl site—at least 60%. ARCO contributed 10% to 20%, and also relied on other disposal methods, such as burning. Texaco dumped no waste until almost the end of the war, and instead burned discovered a method of processing avgas that used far less sulfuric acid than had previously been necessary. SHELL OIL COMPANY v. US 11 its acid sludge waste until late 1944. Some of Union Oil’s sludge was reprocessed rather than dumped. The Allies achieved victory in Europe on May 8, 1945. Japan officially surrendered on September 2, 1945. The United States Government no longer required huge quantities of avgas, and terminated the avgas contracts in 1945 or soon thereafter.