the toxic truth - Greenpeace

80 Amnesty internAtionAl And greenpeAce netherlAnds
Chapter 7
Choosing to do
caustic washing
There were two process by which the
coker naphtha could be refined: one was
mercaptan oxidation (known as the “Merox
process”), and another was caustic washing.
As noted in Chapter 2, both processes
involve mixing caustic soda with the coker
naphtha to capture the mercaptans (which
creates a waste by-product). The Merox
process includes an important second step,
whereby the waste is transformed into stable
disulphides through oxidation. This additional
step is normally undertaken in a specialized
facility. Trafigura carried out caustic washing
and not the Merox process. It made this
decision despite knowing that:
“ Caustic washes are banned by most
countries due to the hazardous nature of
the waste (mercaptans, phenols, smell) and
suppliers of caustic are unwilling to dispose of
the waste since there are not many facilities
remaining in the market. ” 324
Although there are important differences
between caustic washing and Merox, Trafigura
has attempted to conflate the two processes.
On its website, under the heading “Is the
caustic washing/Merox process unusual?”
it states: “No. It’s a well-known, legal and
effective way of reducing impurities in gasoline
blendstocks and has been used in the refining
industry for 50 years. In 2006, there were
1,600 Merox units licensed for operation
worldwide.” 325 Trafigura used none of these
1,600 units because the company did not carry
out the – relatively – safer Merox process but
decided to do caustic washing. Had Trafigura
been carrying out the Merox process, it could
indeed have used one of the 1,600 units it says
exist worldwide. But, as described in Chapter
3, Trafigura had serious difficulties finding a
location on land to do caustic washing, as is
clear from an email sent by Trafigura’s London
office on 28 December 2005:
“ I have approached all our storage terminals
with the possibility of caustic washing and only
Vopak [at] Fujairah and Tankmed [at] La Skhirra
326
our [sic] willing to entertain the idea… ”
The decision to carry out
caustic washing at sea
As noted above, Trafigura identified two
facilities that could undertake caustic washes:
one was in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the
other in Tunisia. Reports indicate that Trafigura
undertook some caustic washing in UAE, but
then moved to Tunisia. However, following an
incident at the Tunisia site, the authorities
there prohibited further caustic washing
because there was not the capacity to deal
adequately with the resulting waste.
Trafigura then decided to undertake caustic
washing on board a ship. There is no known
record of such an operation ever being
conducted on a ship before this. As a Dutch
court later commented, what Trafigura decided
to do: “essentially [boiled] down to the moving
of an industrial process from land to sea.” 327
The matter of dealing with the waste that
would be produced on board a ship – and the
potential difficulties – was clearly on Trafigura’s
radar. Obviously Trafigura was aware of the
difficulties of safe management and disposal
of the waste on land. In making the decision
to carry out caustic washing on board a ship,
senior company executives considered various
options. An email dated 10 March 2006 noted:
“ Does it make any sense to take on t/c [time
charter] a vessel that is about to be scrapped
… and park somewhere in WAF (West Africa) in
order to carry out some of the caustic washings
over there? I don’t know how we dispose of the
slops and I don’t imply we would dump them, but
for sure there must be some way to pay someone
to take them. A ship that doesn’t care about it’s
(sic) coatings and can re-circulate cargo and strip
tanks would work very well. ” 328 (emphasis added)