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Louisiana Refinery Accident Database

Calumet Lubricants 8 (1214), Shreveport

LDEQ Accident Report

Pollutants Released

Accident Classified As: Below Reportable Quantity (BRQ)

Cause of Problem: Power Failure

Heavy flaring of sulfur dioxide resulted due to power failure on February 4, 2013. The heavy flaring began at approximately 2026 hours on February 4, 2013, and continued until 0730 hours on February 5, 2013. At 0949 hours on February 5, 2013, an email from Calumet documented that the flaring stopped at 0730 hours that morning. The plant lost a substation in the west side of the refinery that brought down the boiler systems due to loss of feed pumps and water softeners. This cascaded to loss of other units in the plant. Flaring continued until the flare gas compressor operation could be restored. Reportable quantities were not reported to Louisiana State Police. While reportable quantities were not exceeded, the permit limit for Flare 2 (the point source for this incident) of 0.01 lbs/hour of sulfur dioxide was exceeded by a rate of 41.1 lbs/hour. Also, the plant reported that the highest average three hour value to be 3325ppm SO2.

Discharge Preventable - No Information Given

Notes/Remedial Actions

Even though email correspondence has been located between the refinery and LADEQ the day of the discovery and after heavy flaring had stopped, LABB COULD NOT LOCATE OFFICIAL REFINERY LETTER BEYOND EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE WITH LADEQ. A memoranda from LADEQ dated February 8, 2013 cites that this scenario has also occurred with an incident labeled by LADEQ on 12/25/2013 (a typo, but still mentions a repetitive incident). A complaint was reported to LADEQ by Ms. Velma White citing "extremely bad flaring" on February 4, 2013 at 1635 hours.