Guardian investigation fuels class action lawsuit against petro giant
Guardian investigation fuels class action lawsuit against petro giant
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Marathon Petroleum said a massive fire at its Louisiana refinery caused ‘no offsite impacts’. Reporting by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture raised doubts about this claim. Oil giant Marathon Petroleum is fighting an expanded class action lawsuit fueled by an investigation by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture, which examined a massive toxic blaze at the company’s sprawling refinery in south-west Louisiana in 2023.
Parts of the oil refinery, the third largest in America, caught fire for over three days in August 2023 after a large storage tank containing the toxic and flammable hydrocarbon naphtha leaked for more than 13 hours unbeknownst to the predominantly Black low-income communities that surround the facility.
The incident resulted in one of the largest flammable chemical releases recorded by the Environmental Protection Agency’s risk management program, which monitors accidents at thousands of facilities across the country that store extremely hazardous materials.
The company assured residents living in the heart of the so-called “Cancer Alley” region that “no offsite impacts” had been detected throughout the episode and told government regulators that air monitoring had indicated no harmful level of pollutants in the air beyond the facility’s fenceline. Local officials conducted a brief mandatory evacuation for about 3,000 people living within two miles of the site on the fire’s first day.
