Brazilian Petrochemical Company Buys Part of Delaware County Refinery

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

July 10, 2012 | 1:36 PM

Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania

The Sunoco refinery in Marcus Hook shut its doors earlier this year.

Plastic utensils, lids, autoparts and toys all begin with raw materials created from fossil fuels. Braskem America, one of the largest plastics producers in the United States and Latin America, has bought part of Sunoco’s Marcus Hook refinery. The company plans to use the refinery’s “propylene splitter” to process low grade propylene, which gets turned into polypropylene, or plastics. Braskem says they have secured enough raw material to operate the splitter. Braskem already operates three polypropylene plants in Marcus Hook, Delaware County. Gov. Corbett and Braskem representatives plan to announce more details about the operation on Wednesday.
State and county officials recently issued a study by IHS Global that listed several options for the refinery’s reuse. The consultants emphasized the need for turning Marcellus Shale gas liquids into raw materials used in plastic manufacturing. Three refineries in the Philadelphia area have faced shutdowns this year. The ConocoPhillips plant in Trainer, Delaware County was bought by Delta Airlines, and a private equity firm purchased Sunoco’s Philadelphia plant with plans to process domestic shale oil from North Dakota. But the fate of the Marcus Hook refinery is still uncertain.