Hours of toxic gas leaks at the Pemex oil refinery near Houston far exceeded the legal limit – Blue Water Healthy Living

By David Alire Garcia and Erwin Seba

MEXICO CITY/HOUSTON (Reuters) – Pemex’s Deer Park oil refinery near Houston emitted 43,500 pounds of highly toxic hydrogen sulfide gas over more than seven hours in a deadly incident earlier this week, according to the Mexican state-owned company’s disclosure to a Texas one supervisory authority.

The accident on Thursday left two contract workers dead and 35 others injured while working on equipment at the refinery.

According to Pemex’s initial report to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Oct. 10 leak lasted 7 hours and 40 minutes. During the course of the incident, hydrogen sulfide emissions exceeded the hazardous gas’s hourly emission limit of 6.89 pounds per hour by more than 800 times.

The data from the Texas regulator is from October 11th.

The refinery, which has a crude processing capacity of 312,500 barrels per day, will operate at “low levels” this weekend as Pemex investigates the cause of the leak, the company said in a statement late Friday.

Houston-based Buzbee Law Firm said the lawsuit was commissioned by “several families affected by this terrible incident.”

Pemex management has been operating the facility for almost three years.

Work on a sulfur recovery plant was underway at the time of the fatal discharge, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Deer Park refinery is a key fuel supplier to Mexico, where the government has sought to reduce reliance on gasoline and diesel imports from non-Pemex refineries to become more energy self-sufficient.

Pemex’s newly appointed CEO, Victor Rodriguez, told reporters on Friday morning that thirteen workers remained hospitalized after being exposed to the leak, while Mexico’s energy minister said at the same news conference that she expected the plant to return to normal functioning later on Friday become.

But the company refuted this expectation with its latest statement.

“The refinery continues to operate under stable conditions at low levels, a level that will be maintained over the weekend as long as it is possible to have access to the areas to carry out the relevant inspections,” the company said in its Friday night statement.

Rodriguez, who took over earlier this month, noted Friday that three or four units at the refinery had been shut down following the leak.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), which investigates industrial accidents and makes recommendations to prevent future incidents, has also begun investigating what it described as a “very serious incident.”

CSB said late Friday that its investigators were expected to arrive at the refinery on Saturday.

Deer Park was operated by oil giant Shell for decades, but in early 2022 Pemex took full ownership of the refinery, acquiring Shell’s 50 percent stake in a long-standing joint venture.

In 2021, Shell announced that it had sold its stake in Deer Park to Pemex for approximately $596 million.

Serious accidents have occurred at Pemex’s domestic refineries for years, including explosions and fires that have claimed lives in Mexico.

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia in Mexico City and Erwin Seba in Houston; Additional reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez; Editing by Diane Craft)