A letter to our community

Dear Friends and Neighbors of Shell Deer Park,

I am reaching out to provide an update on our activity at the site and what the community can expect to see in the coming weeks.

Shell has been a part of the Deer Park community for over 90 years and over this time we’ve built strong relationships with the many businesses and organizations that call this area home. Our goal is always to operate a safe and reliable business, and we continually train our emergency response capabilities in the event we need to respond to an incident such as the fire in the olefins unit on May 5. I would like to thank the many responders across the complex, through Channel Industries Mutual Aid, our agency partners at the US Coast Guard, EPA, Texas General Land Office, TCEQ and Harris County Pollution Control, and from the broader Shell organization who stepped up to help ensure the safety of people and the environment, and our other partners.

As the site transitions from response to recovery, we continue to manage the impacts within the fenceline – taking care of our people and our site. We stood up a team to investigate the cause of the fire, and we will share findings once the investigation is complete. Similarly, a team was also stood up to work on repairing and rebuilding the unit. This effort is currently in the planning phase, but we will keep you informed on what can be expected as we move into the execution phase of the plan.

I also want to offer my sincerest thanks to the many local restaurants who worked exceptionally hard to help us provide thousands of meals to responders at the site and to the many companies that have assisted during this response, including CTEH who conducted both on and off-site air and water sampling.

I look forward to continuing this conversation in the days to come and ask that if you have any questions to reach out to us.

Sincerely,

Nate Levin
GM, Shell Deer Park