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Posted Feb 1, 2022, 3:29 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Philadelphia
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As Hilco tears down former PES refinery, questions remain about the site’s future
Quote:
Owners of the former South Philadelphia refinery are ahead of schedule demolishing the jungle of pipes, tanks, and buildings that once filled the 1,000-acre site. But across the river in Southwest Philly, there are no guarantees the refinery’s shuttered tank farm will remain closed.
When Hilco Redevelopment Partners (HRP) spent $225 million to buy the PES refinery site, which shut down after a massive explosion in 2019, the redevelopment company had over 100 buildings, 3,000 tanks and vessels, and 950 miles of pipeline to dismantle. Last year, HRP estimated it would take four years to tear the former refinery down — but it might not take that long.
“We are pacing ahead of schedule, for sure,” said Stephanie Eggert, senior vice president of operations at HRP, in an interview at the former refinery this week.
Already, 45% of the task is complete, company officials say. Residual oil has been flushed from tanks and pipes sitewide, and asbestos, which is dangerous to breathe in, has been removed, to make demolition safer. Significant portions of the site, including the North Yard, which borders Vare Ave., and the Point Breeze Tank Farm, which touches 26th Street, have been largely cleared. Rusted storage tanks, dense webs of piping, process units and buildings, including an asphalt plant, have come down. A total of around 70 large storage tanks have been demolished. In some places, all that can be seen poking out of the gravel is tall, brown grass and orange flags marking monitoring wells for remediation.
Those structures are still standing on other parts of the site, where demolition is not finished. HRP started demolition at the north end of the site, where refinery infrastructure was least dense. Still to go are the Girard Point South Tank Field, Girard Point Fuels Area, and Girard Point Chemicals Area, visible from Penrose Ave. The site’s wastewater treatment plant — once used for refinery process water — now treats groundwater to separate out oil.
HRP promises a “state-of-the-art” e-commerce and life sciences hub called The Bellwether District at the site and has published glossy renderings on its website.The transformation will cost billions. One step in preparing the site for construction will be leveling the ground surface, in part to reduce the site’s vulnerability to flooding. Connelly said this could begin before the end of the year. But company officials have not provided a timeline for when buildings will go up on the site.
On the other side of the river, the Schuylkill River Tank Farm, where petroleum products were once stored, sent out by pipeline or loaded onto trucks and barges, still stands in its entirety, although it’s not currently operating. HRP shut it down in July, 2021, and emptied most of the petroleum from its tanks the next month.
“The market conditions were not favorable to continue to operate,” Eggert said. “So we elected to cease operations, de-inventory the site and then put it in this, you know, non-operable space while we determined its future potential.”
The tank farm, as Southwest Philadelphians used to know it, could potentially come back. Company officials said in 2020 they planned to keep and maximize use of the tank farm, and although operations are currently stalled, restarting the tank farm may still be an option.
“We haven’t ruled anything out,” Eggert said.
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Read more here:
https://whyy.org/articles/as-hilco-tears...8e1DY1WZfL2lMopMqVec2LbV8O3C2gpWQO_ZYbJ8
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