The State of Illinois is finally taking on Premcor and going after the Hartford refinery environmental problems. While Premcor wasn’t the primary owner when the problems started, they are the responsible party now. The RFT did a fairly good job on the issue previously.

This is the second refinery Premcor has had a problem with in the Midwest with Blue Island, Illinois being the other. In both cases, Premcor didn’t start the problems, but bought problem refineries and failed to adequately clean them up. The IEPA refused to act strongly, presumably because of concerns that jobs would be lost. What the IEPA missed is that the jobs should have been lost on outdated and dangerous refineries that had no business being on-line.

Don’t even start on the Port Arthur refinery.