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BP oil refinery waste piles up on Southeast Side

October 18, 2013

Chicago Tribune | By Michael Hawthorne | Link to article

Petroleum coke on Calumet River South Side environmental activists take pictures of a barge carrying petroleum coke waste as they tour Calumet River in Chicago on Monday, Sept. 9, 2013, to see giant mounds of petroleum coke piling up along the river. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune /September 9, 2013)

Petroleum coke on Calumet River
South Side environmental activists take pictures of a barge carrying petroleum coke waste as they tour Calumet River in Chicago on Monday, Sept. 9, 2013, to see giant mounds of petroleum coke piling up along the river. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune /September 9, 2013)

Just south of the Chicago Skyway bridge, a dusty byproduct of the Canadian oil boom is piling up in huge black mountains along the Calumet River.

More is on the way. A lot more.

By the end of the year, the oil giant BP is expected to complete work on new equipment that will more than triple the amount of petroleum coke produced by its Whiting refinery on Lake Michigan. The project will turn the sprawling Indiana plant into the world’s second-largest source of petroleum coke, also known as petcoke, and Chicago into one of the biggest repositories of the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste.

(complete article)