Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
is from places like this that we receive our gasoline and jet fuel and plastic and everything
else that we can't do without. Port Arthur is a refinery town, with oil in its veins, toluene
in the breeze. It is the pungent center jewel in America's petrochemical tiara, also known
as the Gulf Coast, a region that accounts for nearly half of the country's refining capacity.
The US Department of Energy notes that the region has “the highest concentration of soph-
isticated [refining] facilities in the world.”
Port Arthur, much like Fort McMurray, has a reputation as a shithole. But while the Al-
bertans have managed to keep the oil sands mines at a discrete remove, Port Arthur is ut-
terly dominated by its refineries, in ways that are impossible for even a casual observer to
ignore. The downtown is literally encircled by steel forests billowing sulfurous air day and
night. It smells like rotten eggs. Then there are the occasional
upsets
—accidents or mal-
functions that sometimes result in the emergency release of fuel and other refinery goods
into the atmosphere. The gases are burned off as they're released from tubes high above the
plant, and people invariably describe refinery flares as awesome events, artificial auroras
that paint the sky a glowing orange.
Most important, there are the habitual emissions of volatile organic compounds, things
like toluene, benzene, and other contaminants that—it has been plausibly argued—result in
elevated rates of respiratory disease, birth defects, and cancer for the communities that live
with them. And once in a blue moon—seriously, only very occasionally—the plants self-
annihilate. They explode. In Texas City, ninety miles to the west, a 2005 refinery explosion
killed 15 people and injured more than 170.
The industry here is the direct legacy of the boom sparked by the Lucas Gusher, and the
plants that overshadow downtown Port Arthur are the same plants that were built to receive
Spindletop's oil, although a century's growth has transformed them. Valero (whose refinery
first opened in 1901) and Motiva (1903) now cover almost as much land as downtown Port
Arthur itself, and Motiva—in the middle of an expansion when I visited—is on its way to
becoming the largest refinery on the continent.
Nevertheless, you can drive down Port Arthur's main street and fail to see another hu-
man being. With its rows of brick storefronts spread along a breezy coastal ship channel,
downtown Port Arthur has the bones of a charming small city. But they are just that: the
bones.
There are no grocery stores, no hardware stores—in fact I saw no surviving stores of any
genre in downtown Port Arthur. There are no operating banks. Building after building sits
vacant. Most are boarded up, burned out, or otherwise deserted. The industry that inhabits
this city manages somehow not to sustain it.
As was traditional across America, the middle and upper classes of Port Arthur fled their
city's downtown in the 1970s and '80s. Unlike in many other cities, though, the presence
