Valero fined by Delaware for refinery emissions

NEW YORK, June 30 (Reuters) - Valero Energy Corp (VLO.N) must pay the state of Delaware $86,250 for past emissions from its Delaware City refinery, state regulators said on Tuesday.

"They were fined $75,000 for a host of incidents spanning approximately 16 months," said Ravi Rangan, an engineer with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources.

Rangan said the fines were for emissions of sulfur dioxide which exceeded the permitted level of the 210,000-barrel-per-day refinery.

The additional $11,250 was for cost recovery for staff time and resource use.

"Earlier this year, we had an approximately two-month shutdown of the entire Delaware City refinery in which we addressed a lot of electrical and lingering mechanical problems," said Bill Day, a spokesman for the company.

In mid-March, amid weak refinery profit margins, Valero shut the entire plant down to perform a major overhaul on the refinery including comprehensive work on the 180,000 bpd crude unit, the 83,000 bpd fluid catalytic cracking unit and the 53,000 bpd coker unit.

Day said Valero is confident that going forward this extensive work will help improve the reliability of the refinery, picked up in the $8 billion takeover of Premcor in 2005.

"I think they have done the necessary maintenance and repairs," said Rangan. (Reporting by Janet McGurty; editing by Jim Marshall)