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October 17, 2024
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| | We thank all of our TCC and TCA members for making our 2024 TCC-TCA Annual Industry Luncheon a great success. Our Annual Industry Luncheon brings our industrial community together with local, state and federal elected officials and industry partners to recognize the importance of our community’s support for industry. |
| | Kimberly Haas is the site manager for ExxonMobil’s Baytown Olefins Plant (BOP) and serves on the TCC Board of Directors and Executive Committee. ExxonMobil’s BOP has been in operation since 1979 and is located on a 370-acre tract. The plant manufactures approximately 10 billion pounds of petrochemical products each year that are shipped via pipeline. BOP is the largest steam-cracking site in the ExxonMobil fleet globally and produces ethylene, propylene, and butadiene amongst other products. |
| | The countdown is on! We are less than a month out from the General Election and 88 days out from the start of the 89th Texas Legislative Session! January 7, 2025, will mark the start of my 20th year in Texas policy and politics. It still feels like just yesterday that I walked into the Texas Capitol as a wide-eyed, naïve legislative intern. Never would I have imagined the amount of change that I have been lucky enough to witness in my 20 years including four different Speakers take the gavel in the House, two Lt. Governors in the Senate, and the transition from Governor Perry to Governor Abbott. |
| | The U.S. Supreme Court takes on a pivotal case challenging the EPA’s water pollution limits, while key updates on PFAS reporting, chemical risk assessments, and Texas environmental regulations emerge. Read Logan's full article to dive into the latest legal battles and regulatory shifts shaping the landscape in which chemistry operates. |
| | America is at a crossroads in terms of growing and competing on the world stage. In a hotly contested election season, there is one area of clear bipartisan agreement: Our country’s future depends on making more things here at home. To keep America out front, the next president must learn from past regulatory mistakes and adopt policies that expand manufacturing in the United States, including chemical production — not send it overseas. |
| | The Port of Corpus Christi Authority plans to put a hold on its proposed La Quinta seawater desalination project, according to a statement released by the agency. The port, in its efforts to secure permits for desalination sites, aims to provide more options for projects, officials have said. “We have limited resources, which we are using to continue to move forward permitting that would benefit a future developer of desal at Harbor Island, which is the more scalable of the two sites where we previously pursued permits,” wrote port CEO Kent Britton in a statement to the Caller-Times. |
| | When disaster affects the sprawling industrial complexes of Texas, the state’s environmental authority often posts pictures online of its white vans patrolling public streets, verifying the local air is safe to breathe. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality calls this effort its mobile monitoring team, a unit of air pollution specialists based at agency headquarters in Austin. The TCEQ claims the effort is stronger than it’s ever been, but an Inside Climate News analysis of 20 years of agency records and interviews with former employees show it’s only a shadow of what it used to be. |
| | Exxon Mobil’s Houston-area flagship program that promised to revolutionize plastic recycling took center stage this week in a California lawsuit that called the effort a sham. In a complaint filed Monday in California’s highest court, state Attorney General Rob Bonta said Exxon’s sprawling Baytown petrochemical complex was at the heart of what he argued were “false promises” to consumers about the efficacy of a process Exxon bills as “advanced recycling.” |
| | Families who built their small farms around riding their horses, raising cattle and holding family fish fries in rural Johnson County face an uncertain future because of what they’re finding in the pasture or stock tank: dead or deformed cattle, horses and fish. The past two years have been a “nightmare” for the family farmers, and they point to “forever chemicals” found in fertilizer made from sewage as the reason. |
| | Organohalogen flame retardant (OFR) chemistries, which have been added to component materials used in the manufacture of household products for more than 50 years, are a critical tool helping to achieve these standards by making materials less likely to ignite and delaying the onset of combustion that still may occur, slowing the spread of any subsequent fire. Overall, these chemistries offer a versatile, cost-effective, and widely accepted solution to help enable safe use of electronics, improve the material stability and thermal management of these products, and provide highly effective electrical insulation. |
Top | | The Biden administration is awarding $150 million to two Texas projects aiming to boost domestic production of advanced batteries and other materials used for electric vehicles, part of a continuing push to reduce China’s global dominance in battery production and other electronics. The projects are among 25 in 14 states that the White House said Friday will be receiving grants as it allocates more than $3 billion in the second round of EV battery funding under the bipartisan infrastructure law approved in 2021. An earlier round distributed $1.8 billion for 14 projects that are ongoing. |
| | According to a study that was published on October 7th, 2024, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, researchers from Yokohama National University aim to lessen the environmental impact of the chemical manufacturing sector by concentrating on renewable energy sources and alternative techniques for producing the chemical building blocks of some of the most widely used compounds. |
Top | | Amid widespread skepticism about the future scalability of the hydrogen industry, whether it be green, blue, gray or another imagined color, ExxonMobil certainly is not having trouble attracting major investors in its planned blue hydrogen hub at its refining and chemical complex in Baytown, Texas. |
| | The LyondellBasell onsite responders and the Clinton Fire Department participated recently in joint training exercises in College Station, Texas with the Texas A&M Engineering TEEX Extension Service. When experts come together to train, it helps build strong working relationships and establishes trust, said Clinton Fire Department Assistant Chiefe Greg Forari in a news release issued this week by LyondellBasell. |
| | Honeywell will spin off its advanced materials unit into a publicly traded company, the U.S. conglomerate said on Tuesday, simplifying its business to sharpen its focus on aviation, automation and energy transition. The division, valued at $11 billion by Barclays, supplies to industries that make bullet-resistant armor to pharmaceutical packaging. "Given the sustained market demand for advanced specialty chemicals and materials ..., we are confident now is the right time for this business to grow independently," CEO Vimal Kapur said. |
| | The US Environmental Protection Agency is planning to withdraw and reconsider its approval for Chevron to produce 18 plastic-based fuels, including some that an internal agency assessment found are highly likely to cause cancer. In a recent court filing, the federal agency said it “has substantial concerns” that the approval order “may have been made in error”. The EPA gave a Chevron refinery in Mississippi the green light to make the chemicals in 2022 under a “climate-friendly” initiative intended to boost alternatives to petroleum, as ProPublica and the Guardian reported last year. |
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Upcoming Events
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October 18, 2024
9:00AM - 3:00PM | The Wilderness Golf Course Lake Jackson |
| October 23, 2024 | San Jacinto College LyondellBasell Center for petrochemical, Energy, & Technology Pasadena, TX |
| October 25, 2024
7:00AM CDT | Wildcat Golf Club Houston, TX |
| November 14, 2024
4:00PM - 7:00PM | Drifters Hall Port Lavaca, TX |
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