Port Hamilton Seeks Court Exemption from Emissions Control Installation; Says Adverse Ruling Could Keep

Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation wants the court to rule that the refinery does not need to install expensive emissions control technology in order to move forward with restarting operations.

That is the request contained in a motion filed on Friday in district court. The accompanying memorandum of law in support of the motion argues that Port Hamilton is under no obligation to comply with the terms of a consent decree that the Environmental Protection Agency wishes to enforce.

The issue stems from the flaring events in the first half of 2021 that ultimately shut down St. Croix’s refinery and drove its previous owners into bankruptcy. According to Port Hamilton, the EPA believes these incidents “triggered an obligation under the modified consent decree for Limetree Bay to install a flare gas recovery system within two years.” That never happened, and now the EPA says that because Port Hamilton was obligated to join the consent decree under the terms of the bankruptcy order, the company now “cannot resume operations at the refinery until it first installs such a system.”

Port Hamilton’s lawyers argue that the EPA position is “unmoored from and at odds with” the consent decree, since the modification that added the obligation to install the recovery system did not take effect until December 2021, months after the flaring incidents had taken place. As such, that obligation could not have been triggered by those events.