Published: April 24, 2008 12:59 am            

Activity centers on cleaning up property at Champlin Refinery site

Environmental crews currently are working a long-term cleanup of property at the old Champlin refinery site in Enid.

John Christiansen, a spokesman for Anadarko Petroleum, which owns the property, said a group of contract and company employees are working on the project.

“It’s widely known the old Champ-lin refinery ... there’s been some monitoring of groundwater for several years. That continues, and we’re also taking some steps to remediate the ground water,” Christiansen said. “With historical operations such as Champlin, you run into this from time to time.”

The Champlin refinery closed in 1983, and Anadarko has been monitoring the ground water at the location for the past 10 years. There are 150 active monitoring wells. Anadarko also is doing some construction work that is expected be completed in August.

According to Don Hensch, of Okla-homa Department of Environmental Quality, there are three separate systems operating simultaneously. One system injects nutrients into the ground to assist microbes already in the ground that will decompose petroleum hydrocarbons back into natural elements. To do that, the microbes need nutrients, and oxygen and compressed air also will be injected into the ground through a series of wells across the southern boundary of the old refinery site.

In a nearby area, another series of wells will vacuum vapors and some water out of the ground. Hydrocarbon vapors will go through a separator system, Hensch said. The vapor will go through a thermal oxidizer, he said, and the water to a water treatment system to further degrade it and inject it back into the ground to continue the circulation.

Hensch said it is hard to tell how long the remediation effort will require. Similar systems have been successful in just a few years. Anadarko Petroleum has certification and full approval of the DEQ, which approved the process, he said.

A bioplug system also is being set up in other areas of the refinery site to see which system works best. That system injects large quantities of nutrients to build up a biomass in the formation and continuously treats water as it flows through the biomass. The system working best will be used in other areas of the old refinery that also need remediation work, Hensch said.

There are 12 contractors on site at any time, and the monitoring has been ongoing for some time, Christiansen said. The separation effort will continue for a number of years.

“This was the old refinery that was part of Union Pacific resources, which Anadarko acquired in 2000.” Christiansen said. “The main thing is for us to make sure it is cleaned up and done safely and kept right.”