Lessons for Washington State Leaders as Another US Oil Refinery Closes

In a state home to five oil refineries, a forthcoming, taxpayer-funded study can answer some central questions.
Yet another US oil refinery will soon shut its doors. Phillips 66 announced in October 2024 that it will close its Los Angeles refinery by the end of 2025, due to factors that include declining oil demand and slim refining margins. An estimated 900 people are likely to lose their jobs when the refinery shutters.
Phillips 66's decision to close its Los Angeles refinery comes after reports earlier this year that the corporation planned to divest from $3 billion of its assets. And the news continues the ongoing trend of refinery closures across the United States. Seven US refineries closed between 2019 and 2022, according to Sightline's research. At least one other, in Houston, Texas, will shutter in 2025. More refineries will undoubtedly close as oil demand slows and then peaks, an event likely to occur before 2030.
Phillips 66 also owns a refinery in Ferndale, one of five in Washington state. News of the Los Angeles closure re-ups the urgency for Washington leaders to start a transition plan now for the future of the state's refining communities.
Lawmakers have an opportunity with a forthcoming refinery study from the state Department of Commerce. Legislators who requested the study - and invested $250,000 of public funds in it - can make sure the final product hews to its original intent and helps set Washington up for a better, more resilient future: one with clean air and water for nearby residents and Tribes, support for refinery workers, economic stability and tax and employment diversification for towns and counties that host the state's refineries, and a pathway to meeting Washington's climate goals.
The Phillips 66 oil refinery has polluted Los Angeles's Wilmington neighborhood for decades
Residents of Wilmington, the neighborhood in South Los Angeles where the soon-to-be-closed Phillips 66 refinery and several others are based, have breathed in the refinery's toxic pollution for decades - and suffered the health consequences that come with that. Just one example: one in three Wilmington households includes a member with cancer, compared to the US average of one in ten.
The Phillips 66 refinery has spewed on average more than 1,000 pounds of chemicals every day into Wilmington's air since 2000, including hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide, according to analysis by the environmental news outlet Grist. Unsurprisingly, then, many local environmental and community activists welcomed the news of the refinery's closure, while expressing concern for the laid-off workers.
Locals worry site will follow other shuttered refineries' fates
Still, Phillips 66 has not yet announced what will come next for the site, leaving some residents concerned that pollution could continue.
"I hope that Phillips 66 doesn't plan another polluting operation…continuing the trend of fossil fuels that are fueling the catastrophe of illnesses in the neighborhood and in the climate,"
Alicia Rivera, an organizer with the California environmental justice group, Communities for a Better Environment, told LAist.
Sightline's 2022 report on recent US refinery closures shows Rivera is right to be worried about what will come next. Four of the seven US refineries that closed between 2019 and 2022 converted to processing biofuels, in most cases with a sliver of their former workforce, no environmental remediation of the sites, and continued local pollution. Two refineries are keeping skeletal operations open to store oil or "idle" indefinitely, laying off almost all of their workers and shirking responsibility for environmental cleanup.
Only one of the seven, in Philadelphia, is being redeveloped entirely into a complex of e-commerce warehouses and life sciences buildings, which developers have branded the "Bellwether District." Even so, some local residents, who, like those in Wilmington, have suffered from decades of toxic pollution, a...