A former LyondellBasell refinery is switching to plastic recycling. Will the community get a say?
The first refinery built along the Houston Ship Channel in 1918 shut down its petroleum production this spring, laying off hundreds of workers, but owner LyondellBasell had no intention of closing the site itself.
Instead, the company applied for expedited permits to turn part of the facility into a chemical recycling unit for plastic waste.
The move to recycling plastic is setting off a firestorm from local environmental and community groups who want a say in the future of the industrial site. But according to recent correspondence with state regulators, they may not get one, even on paper, until years after the new business is up and running.
"This new process fundamentally changes LyondellBasell's Houston refining," the Environmental Defense Fund's Grace Tee Lewis said at a recent meeting, adding that the switch "has the potential to change the nature of chemicals in the air, which can have serious implications for the health of those living nearby."
In an email to the law firm Lone Star Legal Aid, TCEQ air permits manager Becky Tsuchiya said the new permit did not change the "character of emissions" from the plant, so there was no need for the typical public comment period that is required under the law when a company wants to emit new pollutants.
According to the company's application for the project, the proposed unit would bring in recycled plastic pellets and combine them with a heated catalyst material to produce gases and liquids that can be sent away for use in new plastic production. The process will release air pollutants, albeit on a smaller scale than the massive, 268,000-barrel-a-day refinery.
If permitted, the new plant would leverage technology billed by major producers like LyondellBasell and ExxonMobil as an efficient solution to recycle plastic waste. California Attorney General Rob Bonta and environmental groups such as the Sierra Club call the technology a "false solution."
LyondellBasell told state regulators that the recycling project is the first of its kind at the site, and will help the company reduce its carbon emissions.
"This is the first project associated with the redevelopment of the site from refining of petroleum crude oil to alternatives that are consistent with the company's decarbonization goals," LyondellBasell said in an October air permit application filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
‘We are stymied'
Though the residents' lawyers were told the public could not comment on LyondellBasell's new plan to build a plastics unit at the site, community members were invited to a separate meeting on overarching permissions for the facility's air pollution, known as a federal Title V permit.
Speakers were instructed not to ask about, or comment on, the advanced recycling unit LyondellBasell said it planned to build by 2027. They were told to focus instead on permitted pollution from the refinery operation, even though it has permanently ceased refining crude oil.
If approved, the air pollution permit could later be extended to cover the plastic recycling unit and other additions without further public comment, allowing updates to run until 2030 before residents have a chance to weigh in.
Lauren Godshall, an EarthJustice attorney, was one of several attendees who expressed frustration over the process that seemed to shut community members out of the "new source review" process for the recycling unit.
"We are stymied. We would like to comment on that permit. We think a lot is going to happen that is very important," Godshall said. "But we have been told over and over again that we don't get that opportunity."
LyondellBasell and TCEQ representatives at the public meeting said that the process to permit the new unit was handled by different staff members and followed an entirely separate process. In the meantime, the Title V permit renewal was necessary to maintain the plant's current operations.
"We're not processing crude, but there are still activities at the facility that are going to go on for several months and even years," the refinery's environmental issues manager Roel Munoz said.
Plastic recycling debated
Some community members pointed to the refinery's history of repeated pollution permit violations to show why they did not trust LyondellBasell's plans to repurpose the aging facility.
"We have the right to speak on that and say what we want and don't want in our backyards," said Patricia Gonzales, a Pasadena resident and director of Caring for Pasadena Communities.
The repurposed refinery would be LyondellBasell's first U.S. foray into the process of chemically breaking down plastics to turn recycled pellets into new petroleum products. It is not new to the technology, though: In 2023, the company kicked off construction of an industrial-scale catalytic advanced recycling plant in Wesseling, Germany.
"We are committed to addressing the global challenge of plastic waste," LyondellBasell's chief executive Peter Vanacker said at the time.
The company's Houston operation would not be the only plastic recycling investment in the area: Exxon opened a facility using related technology in Baytown in 2022, and the two petrochemical companies kicked off a joint venture to construct a "circularity center" in the Houston area that will prepare recycled plastic pellets for the processes.
As the budding advanced recycling industry grows with Houston as its U.S. epicenter, its impacts and environmental claims are poised to continue to face scrutiny in the courts and public sphere.
Exxon's Baytown plant was the target of a recent lawsuit from the state of California which claimed the company "misled the public about the technical capabilities" of its recycling process. The state's attorney general, Bonta, said in the lawsuit that only 8% of the plastics recycled at the Baytown facility became new plastics while the rest was burned as fuel, among other claims about the "false solution."
Exxon denied the lawsuit's claims, saying "advanced recycling works."
It was also part of a recently-filed countersuit with the city of Baytown which alleged that Bonta, among others, had "disparaged ExxonMobil's advanced recycling business, interfered with its contracts, and defamed its reputation."