Recently there was an article in the Chicago Tribune about some additional leeway given to the BP facility in Whiting Indiana with regard to ammonia discharge amounts. The article was very critical of the BP situation but didn't give BP it's due credit with what they try to do with regard to protecting our environment and to remain within the federal and state guidelines they are given.
Below are some facts about the BP Whiting facility:
- Energy security and diversity -
BP plans to spend more than $3 billion to modernize the Whiting Refinery to process additional heavy crude oil from Canada, a secure and reliable source.
-Only treated water into Lake Michigan
What is released from our refinery is treated water that is more than 99.9% water — not sludge. All sludge is treated separately, according to state and federal requirements, and never discharged into Lake Michigan.
-Continuous improvement
For the benefit of the environment, the Whiting Refinery voluntarily reduced total suspended solids in its water discharge by 40% in just the past four years.
There are more things that BP is doing to try to protect us as they continue to feed our appetite for more and less expensive gasoline that you can read here about BP policies and guidelines. In the end, we need to remain vigilant about how our environment is treated but at the same time, we need to make sure that we are not trashing companies that are putting forth an effort to do the right thing while trying to provide us with what we are expecting and that is a less expensive, non middle eastern supply of oil. We need to reduce that dependency on foreign oil and this is one step in that direction. BP appears to at least be trying to do this responsibly.
Technorati Tags: BP, Petroleum Production, Canadian Heavy Crude
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