Oil Firm Fined for Pollution at Port

A major petroleum-loading facility at the Port of Long Beach will pay a $225,000 fine and spend $675,000 for new pollution-control equipment under a settlement that federal officials announced Tuesday.

Arco Terminal Services Corp. was responsible for 294 air pollution violations from 1995 to 1999, according to officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to reach the settlement Friday.

Those violations allowed the illegal release annually of about 9.4 tons of volatile organic compounds, primarily oil and gas fumes, EPA officials said. Such compounds contribute to the formation of smog.

“We certainly consider that a significant amount of violations,” said Ivan Lieben, assistant counsel at the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco.

Petroleum products are loaded and unloaded at the Arco terminal. Oceangoing tankers bring petroleum to the port and much of it is then transported to a refinery in Carson.

The EPA discovered the violations during routine reviews of emission reports from the terminal company, then part of Arco, which BP bought in 2000.

The company was violating a rule that prohibited loading or unloading of petroleum products at marine terminals in Southern California waters unless control equipment was in place to prevent fumes from escaping. The firm erroneously thought that such substances were not subject to Clean Air Act requirements, Lieben said.

The company changed its loading procedures in 2002 to prevent such violations, said BP spokesman Phil Cochrane.

As part of a consent decree, the company must use control devices to prevent future releases. It also must put $675,000 into a project at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to control diesel exhaust from trucks and off-road cargo handling equipment, EPA officials said.