Environment Minister’s On-Site Inspection of Beijing Petrochemical Company Finds Chaos

(Yicai Global) April 5 — Chen Jining, China’s minister of environmental protection, led an inspection team without notice to examine firms in Beijing’s suburbs, finding a series of problems on scene.

Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining led a team yesterday on an-site visit to Sinopec Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Co. and other enterprises, and carried out an on-site inspection on the implementation of emergency response measures for heavy pollution in the city’s Fangshan district.

Chen conducted a painstaking examination of company production facilities and volatile organic compound (VOC) control project operations in the butadiene synthetic rubber production workshop.

Although Beijing Yanshan has transformed a set of tail gas adsorption system, an obvious odor permeated the system, and two sets of VOC control systems had not been transformed, and pollution not yet effectively resolved.

The existence of process defects caused most adsorption products to become volatile, resulting in secondary pollution.

Later, the minister asked to read the enterprise leak detection and repair electronic data account in the safety production command center. The company, however, still failed to retrieve the relevant data after Chen had waited for nearly 20 minutes, and responsible personnel were unfamiliar with the account, which lacked any analyses and was even unused, indicating poor daily management.

“Sinopec Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Co. should effectively improve its environmental protection work, especially on the problem of VOC control work, and they should solidly carry out the work, and strengthen management,” Chen said. The company manufactures and markets plastic products and synthetic lubricants, the Bloomberg news service website shows.

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