Some Overnight Fun At Shell's Deer Park Plant

The problem with oil refineries, from a purely layman’s point of view, is
they’re full of valves and fittings and all manner of other hardware that
seem to leak after a certain amount of wear and tear.

And so it was at the Shell plant in Deer Park beginning at 1:44 a.m.
yesterday — Sunday, December 18.

It was a flange leak and Shell officials aren’t sure yet why it leaked,
but it did and it lasted a full eight hours, until 9:48 a.m.

The bulk of it, unfortunately, could not be sent to a flare to be burned
up, so into the atmosphere it went:

— 7,207 pounds of hydrocarbons

— 202 pounds of benzene

— 908 pounds of butane

— And lots of other stuff.

The good news is a lot of other contaminants that were released were sent to
a flare, and the other good news, of course, is that most of us were
sleeping, or about to go to sleep, when all those airborne wooly boogers
were unleashed.

— Steve Olafson