DEP Hopeful a Buyer Will Emerge to Keep the ConocoPhillips Refinery Open

There’s still no word on any prospective buyers for the idled ConocoPhillips oil refinery in Delaware County. The company plans to demolish the facility if no sale happens by the end of March. And yet, the Department of Environmental Protection remains hopeful that the plant will find someone to take over. The DEP renewed the plant’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit today.

“The renewal of this permit continues to protect an important environmental asset, the Delaware River Estuary,” DEP Secretary Mike Krancer said in a press release. “Also, even though the facility is currently idle, this permit renewal is a necessary and critical step in putting the refinery in a position to be acquired by a new operator, which we hope will happen.”

The closure of the ConocoPhillips refinery, along with the neighboring Sunoco refinery, will cost the Philadelphia region 1200 jobs. A lobby day in Washington, D.C. is planned for Wednesday. Two hundred workers say they will tell lawmakers that the closures will not just cost them their jobs, but also create a shortage of home heating oil and gasoline in the Northeast. They plan to demonstrate outside of the headquarters of ConocoPhillips and Sunoco.
 

Editor's Picks