Valero’s Port Arthur Refinery Explosion: Fossil Fuels Will Always Spoil the Good Life

“We believe in the graven image/ We believe in the fight to the finish

We desire the almighty dollar/ The pound of flesh, the golden collar

Lick the hand, we leave our land FOR DOGS.”

— Dogs, Motӧrhead

Dog Days in Oil Country

Hello from somewhere outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, where it is hovering just above 30 degrees as I write this a few hours before sunrise. There’s an almost-full moon out that has absorbed whatever small amount of light Flagstaff throws into the night sky. From this small cabin in the middle of the Coconino National Forest, I can see the pines and sagebrush outside are coated in blue, the kind of blue you can only see when you’re not near any light at all, not even stars. I have not seen this blue since Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

Back during that winter freeze, I had spent some of those nights sleeping in my car and office for warmth while reporting on the storm’s impact for the Port Isabel-South Padre Press. For whatever reason, Garcia Street in Port Isabel still had power when much of the area did not. On the coldest night that week, a few friends and I took whatever brush we could find in Laguna Heights and used that as a base for firewood we stole from someone’s pile in a nearby alley and torched it with stale gasoline, cursing a list of local, state, and national officials through the night.

When that fire finally died, that’s when I saw the blue. With no light pollution from South Padre Island or the Port of Brownsville, I saw the night sky as it was for the first time. I don’t remember how late it was, but I do remember feeling the next day that if I ever saw that color there again that something had gone wrong.

Putting together the issue that week, I felt a tremendous guilt for enjoying that color and silence, knowing that people were freezing. So, thousands of miles and several lifetimes away, that’s all that comes to mind seeing this blue again.

Something broke for me and a lot of Texans during 2021’s winter storm. My aging parents also had to use fire at their home to stay warm. I gave away whatever warm clothes I had to friends who didn’t have any. I saw local news and officials treat what was happening as an aberration and not a consequence of the state’s hubris. I saw that oil and gas billionaires couldn’t be controlled, no matter how much they tried to convince all of us that they were the masters of both the fuels and the state

There’s more recent examples of this hubris on display. Two weeks ago, an oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, exploded. Nobody was killed, and as far as I could find, nobody was injured, miraculously. At least not yet. Because this explosion emitted thousands of pounds of pollutants, and there’s no telling what future health calamity these will be part of in the years ahead, when “natural causes” becomes the socially acceptable catch-all for being killed by the petrochemical industry.

When I went to Freeport, Texas, this past summer to see how the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry has changed the communities there, I talked to people who witnessed the Freeport LNG explosion in 2022. One person I spoke to, who didn’t make it into my story, said that what made this explosion different from other industrial accidents in the city was the lack of communication from the company and the general confusion as to what to do next.

People evacuating Quintana Island, which included students on a field trip to the beach, had to drive past Freeport LNG on the island’s lone road out to Freeport. Freeport LNG said that the facility had posed “no risk” to the community a few hours after the explosion, only to be admonished by nearby residents who narrowly avoided a truly catastrophic accident. Freeport LNG also claimed that the accident only emitted pollution of a “limited quantity," which the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration investigation disproved.

Valero’s Port Arthur Refinery Explosion

So when Valero’s Port Arthur refinery, the company’s largest, exploded two weeks ago, I watched all the videos I could find that residents posted. I’ve never seen, in person, smoke that black or bulbous, the mark of the beasts that are oil and chemical fires. This one started because of the refinery’s “hydroeater,” which removes sulfur from diesel fuel, being overloaded with hydrogen and unrefined oil. That much unrefined fuel at once becomes too hot to handle for the pipe, leading to an explosion. It released over 150,000 pounds of pollutants over 10 days.

Like the gas plants that froze in 2021, this explosion was another example that neither company nor state could control fossil fuel, especially not this heavy crude from Venezuela, which is what the refinery was processing when it exploded. Fossil fuels simultaneously power the world’s lifeways and still escape human domination.

This explosion happened a few days after Brownsville celebrated the administration announcing a refinery was coming to the Port. I’ve seen some good reporting on the explosion in a geopolitical and environmental justice context, which I’ll link to in further reading below.

In other news, a documentary about SpaceX by Canadian filmmaker Julien Elie, Shifting Baselines, is screening in Austin, Texas, on May 1 featuring yours truly. The film is gorgeous, and working with Elie and his team was an incredible opportunity. I’m honored it’s the only (and last) SpaceX film I’m a part of. You may see me there.

Until Then,

C/S

Video

Gaige Davila, author of Deceleration’s Coastlines/Faultlines newsletter, unpacks the recent explosion at Valero’s Port Arthur refinery as the company attempted to refine heavy Venezuelan oil. We’re promised over and again an easy prosperous relationships with fossil fuels, but the reality always proves to be something else. Folks can exist alongside these facilities, but a good life? That’s something else, Davila says. Follow Deceleration on YouTube.

Event

Canadian filmmaker Julien Élie heads to Boca Chica, Texas, the headquarters of SpaceX, to meet the people who dream of humanity’s next frontier in a town transformed by space exploration. Meanwhile, exceptional scientists around the world warn about the existential impacts of the insatiable space race. This beautifully composed, exceptionally poetic, and engaging film was the winner of a Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC.