Kaohsiung will struggle to get its oil-soaked soil back to baseline.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/02/21
By: Timothy Ferry
The CPC Corporation’s massive Kaohsiung refinery complex ceased operations in
本圖為高雄市，僅為示意圖。｜Photo Credit：による撮影 CC BY 3.0
December 2015 as promised by the state-owned oil company in 1990 (when it was known as the Chinese Petroleum Corp.). Then Premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) promised local residents who were protesting development of the Fifth Naphtha Cracker and its huge associated petrochemical complex that the entire operation would be closed in 25 years.
More than seven decades of continuous operation resulted in the refinery being more polluted than typical sites targeted for cleanup.
What remains today is one of Taiwan’s largest contaminated waste removal projects. The refinery, which encompasses 273 hectares in downtown Kaohsiung, had a daily refining capacity of 200,000 barrels of crude oil and an annual production capacity of 50,000 metric tons of petroleum products and their derivatives. The Kaohsiung facility was the longest operating refinery in Taiwan, having begun in 1937 by supplying the Imperial Japanese Navy.
More than seven decades of continuous operation resulted in the refinery being more polluted than typical sites targeted for cleanup. “Some of those pollutants that have been there for a long time are not easily degraded,” says Tsai Meng-yu, director-general of the Kaohsiung City Government Environmental Protection Bureau (KEPB).
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