Where does it all start? Fracking and vinyl chloride production in Texas

Where does it all start? Fracking and vinyl chloride production in Texas

To make vinyl chloride, OxyVinyls relies on hazardous extraction and production methods in obtaining its key ingredients: ethylene, made from fracked natural gas, and chlorine gas. The production process drives demand for fracking, releases greenhouse gases, and pollutes communities where factories are located.

The raw materials for vinyl chloride come from the Permian Basin (West Texas and New Mexico), where Occidental Petroleum (the parent company of OxyVinyls) uses hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas liquids. Its processing plants and pipelines deliver gas liquids to Occidental’s petrochemical plants on the Gulf Coast of Texas, where it makes vinyl chloride.^{58-61, k} To make vinyl chloride, factories react chlorine gas with ethylene (made from fracked natural gas) to produce ethylene dichloride. Ethylene dichloride is further processed to create vinyl chloride monomer (VCM).⁶²

The vinyl plastics industry has been expanding in recent years, increasing demand for fracked natural gas. In 2017, OxyVinyls and its partner Orbia opened a $1.5 billion ethane cracker at its Ingleside facility near Corpus Christi⁶³ to convert natural gas liquids into ethylene. OxyVinyls also sources ethylene from crackers owned by others.^{64, l} Orbia consumes vinyl chloride from Ingleside at its PVC plants in Illinois, New Jersey, Mexico, and Colombia.^{65, m}

Vinyl chloride and climate pollution

Besides helping to maintain and increase demand for fracked natural gas, vinyl chloride manufacture pollutes air with toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases. In 2022, OxyVinyls and its joint venture partner, Orbia, ranked as the country’s third and fifth leading sources of vinyl chloride air pollution. Together, Orbia and OxyVinyls’ VCM operations in Texas, Illinois, and New Jersey reported releasing 61,774,974 pounds of vinyl chloride into the air.⁶⁶ From company reports, EPA calculates they also released 3,339,604 metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2022.^{67, n}

Every U.S. OxyVinyls and Orbia plant in this investigation has been out of compliance with Clean Air, Clean Water, or other federal environmental regulations within the last 18 months.^{68-70, o} See Table 2 below for more details.

Table 2: Vinyl chloride and greenhouse gas pollution from vinyl chloride and PVC factories evaluated in this investigation

Sources: U.S. EPA Toxics Release Inventory and U.S. EPA Facility Level Information on Greenhouse Gases Tool (FLIGHT) database, and the EPA ECHO Database via fencelinedata.org.

Future expansion of the PVC industry in the U.S.?

Concerns over PVC production expanding in the U.S. are growing. As a result of a new law preventing the import of vinyl manufactured with forced labor, there are indications that vinyl flooring imports plummeted in 2023. U.S. Customs began detaining vinyl flooring products that weren’t documented free of forced labor from the Xinjiang region of China. Now, companies like AHF are “reshoring” production.^{71, p} Orbia plans to build a new 1.1 million ton vinyl chloride and PVC plant somewhere in the U.S. by the year 2028.⁷² OxyVinyls is investing $1.1 billion in updating its La Porte operation.⁷³ If government agencies keep approving OxyVinyls’ applications—or worse, approve Orbia’s plans for a giant new PVC factory somewhere in the U.S.— it will result in the continued production of this poison plastic.

Another East Palestine or Paulsboro disaster, or worse, is inevitable, as long as OxyVinyls’ vinyl chloride trains keep rolling to plastics factories to make PVC building materials and other products.