ExxonMobil Chemical Ltd pled guilty at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court to breaching pollution control regulations at the Cowdenbeath plant on various occasions between April 7 and April 26, 2019.
The breaches occurred when the company was required to carry out continuous flaring for five days following an unexpected shutdown at the plant.
The Scottish Environmental and Protection Agency (SEPA) received over 900 complaints in relation to dark smoke and noise from the plant’s flare. Some of those complaining lived as far as five and a half miles away in Kirkcaldy.
Some local residents compared the noise to the sound of a jet engine while others feared that a major explosion was imminent. Others complained of the incident disturbing their sleep.
Prosecutors identified that while the company did have suitable processes and procedures in place to have prevented the incident, the issue was that those processes and procedures were not followed to a high enough standard, leading to the violations of environmental legislation.
Iain Batho, who leads on environmental matters for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), said:
“The law in Scotland and the terms of the permits granted to companies involved in running petrochemical plants holds those companies to high standards designed to mitigate the risks of pollution and of causing disruption or harm to the general public.
“On this occasion ExxonMobil Chemical Ltd fell below those standards and breached the terms of their permit.
“The impact of the unplanned flaring from Mossmorran in April 2019 was both preventable and unacceptable and it caused substantial stress and anxiety to people living within several miles of the plant.
“This was a complex case following a thorough and large-scale investigation by SEPA.
“The conviction in this case highlights that large global companies will ultimately be held to account for breaches of environmental legislation in Scotland and recognises the significant impact that this incident had on local communities.”
Prosecutors told the court how a number of steam-generating boilers and furnaces were simultaneously taken offline for the purposes of maintenance, cleaning and inspection.
At 12.24 on April 21, 2019, one of the remaining boilers unexpectedly shut down due to a faulty cable.
This resulted in an overall loss of steam balance, causing the whole plant to have to shut down.
In that scenario, it was inevitable that it would take around five days to get the plant up and running again.
In the meantime, it was essential to continuously flare until the plant became operational.
Flaring involves the burning of excess gas and is a necessary safety measure to prevent a build-up of gas within the plant.
Subsequent investigations revealed that the company did have processes in place which, if implemented correctly, would have minimised the risk of the plant having to shut down on April 21, 2019, and would therefore have avoided the flaring that occurred thereafter.
However, those processes were not followed sufficiently.
This included a lack of understanding among some employees regarding the steam balance required for the plant to operate.
In addition, there was a failure to identify, through ongoing review and technical monitoring, the increased vulnerability to the steam balance caused by the conflicting works that required numerous boilers and furnaces to be offline at the same time.
Errors were also found in implementing the processes and procedures that were in place to mitigate against issues presented by reduced steam generation capacity.
The company’s operating permit conditions require it to adhere to certain standards in relation to smoke emissions.