SANTA FE, New Mexico, January 25, 2025 (ENS) – The U.S. Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the New Mexico Environment Department, NMED, have announced a proposed $35 million settlement with HF Sinclair Navajo Refining LLC, resolving alleged Clean Air Act and New Mexico Air Quality Control Act violations at the company’s oil refinery adjacent to Artesia, a small city of 13,000 residents, overburdened by pollution.
Dallas, Texas-based HF Sinclair (NYSE: DINO), the new parent entity of HollyFrontier, last year completed its acquisition of Sinclair Oil.
In 2018 and 2019, monitoring at the Artesia refinery recorded the highest refinery fenceline benzene concentrations in the country. This settlement is part of the Biden Administration’s Justice Department and EPA’s commitment to address unlawful pollution in historically marginalized and disproportionally impacted communities.
“The fenceline community in Artesia has lived with the burden of benzene and VOC emissions for many years. This settlement is an overdue step in bringing them some relief from the potential health effects of these pollutants,” EPA Regional Administrator Dr. Earthea Nance said. “The Roselawn Elementary School, just hundreds of feet away from the HF Sinclair refinery, is a reminder of how critical our rulemaking and enforcement efforts are to protecting the health and environment of impacted citizens.”
Under the settlement, HF Sinclair Navajo, an HF Sinclair Corp. subsidiary, must pay the $35 million civil penalty, owed in equal shares to the United States and the State of New Mexico. In addition, the company must implement compliance measures estimated to cost $137 million, including capital investments, to reduce emissions at its refinery.
The compliance measures are projected to achieve reductions of:
- – 180 tons per year of hazardous air pollutants, including benzene
- – 2,716 tons per year of volatile organic compounds, VOCs
- – 51 tons per year of nitrogen oxides, NOx
- – 31 tons per year of sulfur dioxide, SO2
These include reductions already achieved in response to EPA’s investigations. All told, the emission reductions have a related climate benefit of reducing 97,551 tons per year of carbon dioxide emission equivalence.
On the northern edge of the Permian oil basin, oil has been the mainstay of Artesia’s economy for nearly a century. Now, HF Sinclair Navajo must operate 10 real-time air pollution monitors along the refinery fence line and one real-time air pollution monitor and six other passive monitors in the town of Artesia to measure refinery air pollution emissions and make the results available on a public website.
“This settlement reinforces the United States’ commitment to protect communities from illegal refinery benzene and VOC [volatile organic compound] emissions,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Katherine Konschnik of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “Under the settlement, the refinery will make significant capital investments in pollution controls and implement additional programs to improve air quality and reduce health impacts on the residents of Artesia, including the students at Roselawn Elementary School.”
“HF Sinclair Navajo’s failure to monitor and control the release of benzene, a known carcinogen, and other hazardous and toxic air pollutants posed a significant threat and potential health risks to the nearby community,” said Acting Assistant Administrator Cecil Rodriguez of EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “The monitoring required by today’s settlement will ensure that the community and state and federal regulators will have real-time emissions data to help ensure the community is protected against future health impacts from the refinery’s operations.”
“Today’s settlement continues to hammer home that if you don’t follow through on your commitments to clean air by following our rules, permits, or prior settlement agreements, you will pay for it in fines,” said Secretary James Kenney of NMED. “Today’s action not only obtains civil penalties – it forces the Artesia Refinery to invest in a number of projects to benefit our state, including improving controls for cancer-causing benzene emissions and other pollutants that infringe on New Mexicans’ right to breathe clean air.”
HF Sinclair Navajo has agreed to take the necessary measures to address the refinery’s failure to comply with regulations that govern a wide range of refinery equipment and operations, including flaring, fenceline monitoring of benzene emissions, wastewater, storage vessels, heat exchanger leaks and leak detection and repair.
These failures are alleged in the United States’ complaint, filed simultaneously with the settlement, and resulted in the release of hazardous air pollutants and VOCs directly into the air. The company will address these failures by:
- – Installing a flare gas recovery system that will reduce VOC, SO2, and NOx, and greenhouse gas emissions;
- – Implementing capital investments and additional upgrades to wastewater equipment to reduce benzene in wastewater streams and an enhanced monitoring program to more quickly identify and address air pollution emissions;
- – Implementing numerous projects, such as the installation of geodesic domes, for storage vessels to reduce VOC emissions and an enhanced and innovative monitoring program to more quickly identify and address air pollution emissions;
- – Strengthening leak detection and repair practices at the refinery to lower VOC and HAP emissions from process equipment and
- – Implementing an enhanced inspection and chemical monitoring program of heat exchangers to more quickly identify VOC and HAP emissions from cooling towers.
Under the settlement HF Sinclair Navajo agreed to operate and maintain air pollution monitors at the facility fenceline and in the community at an estimated cost of $1.8 million. The monitoring will help ensure compliance with Clean Air Act’s regulations, and help the company identify and address potentially harmful emission sources more quickly.
Additionally, the fenceline and community monitoring will help regulators and the community hold HF Sinclair Navajo accountable for harmful air pollutants entering the community.
Benzene is known to cause cancer in humans and is associated with short-term and long-term inhalation exposure risks.
VOCs, along with nitrous oxide, play a major role in the atmospheric reactions that produce ozone, which is the primary constituent of smog. Ground-level ozone exposure is linked to a variety of short- and long-term health problems.
HF Sinclair Corp. is a publicly traded energy company headquartered in Dallas. The Artesia refinery serves markets in the southwestern United States and has a crude oil capacity of 100,000 barrels per day.
The proposed consent decree was filed with the U.S District Court for the District of New Mexico and is subject to a 30-day comment period. The complaint and the proposed consent decree are available at www.justice.gov/enrd/consent-decrees.
Featured image: HF Sinclair Navajo Refinery adjacent to the town of Artesia, New Mexico. April 4, 2022 (Photo by Watts via Flickr)
