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Posted on 11/08/2001 8:44:14 PM PST by gcruse

              November 9, 2001

              Judge Blocks Evangelist's Effort to Reopen a Refinery

              By GREG WINTER

                  ANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif., Nov. 8 — Browning with age, its
                  spires slowly rusting, the old Powerine oil refinery sits dormant after
              decades of bellowing smoke so thick that residents complained it took the
              paint off their cars.

              For the last three years, Pat Robertson, the television evangelist, has been
              trying to start it again, but the going has been rough.

              First, Mr. Robertson accused large oil companies of intimidating bankers so
              they would not lend him money.

              And today, an order by a federal district judge in Los Angeles took effect,
              temporarily stripping the oil company that Mr. Robertson controls, Cenco
              Inc., of its permits and halting its plans to turn crude oil into gasoline for
              charitable purposes.

              "The public interest favors enforcing the Clean Air Act and protecting the
              environment," Judge A. Howard Matz wrote. Reopening the refinery without
              installing the latest pollution controls, Judge Matz added, presented "the
              possibility of irreparable harm."

              Although the case will probably not be decided until next year, the company
              said that it has complied with all environmental regulations, and is appealing
              the ruling.

              With $20 million from his charitable trust, Mr. Robertson formed Cenco in
              1998 to buy the refinery, hoping to turn California's thirst for gasoline into a
              generator of revenue for his work. At the time, court records show, Mr.
              Robertson was Cenco's sole board member. He remains its president.
              Cenco estimates it will cost more than $100 million to get the refinery
              running.

              When Mr. Robertson's charitable trust is liquidated, his associates said, any
              profits from the refinery will go to charity. But they said they did not know
              when that might be.

              Flanking the refinery in Santa Fe Springs, about 16 miles from Los Angeles,
              are a hospital, a home for the elderly and an elementary school. In addition
              to the environmentalists who filed the lawsuit, many residents of the
              neighborhood, which is about 70 percent Latino, also oppose the reopening
              of the plant.

              Marching outside the refinery gates, protesters have accused Mr. Robertson,
              the founder of the Christian Coalition, of environmental racism and have
              dragged his effigy in the streets, depicting him with devil's horns and a pointy
              red tail.

              "Mr. Robertson underestimated how strongly the majority of citizens feel
              about reopening this refinery," said Luis Gonzalez, the town's mayor and one
              of the few city officials to oppose Cenco from the start. "It's one of the
              reasons why I got elected."

              Mr. Robertson declined to comment on the dispute, his aides said, because
              he was busy "praying for the nation" and did not want to "divert his attention
              elsewhere."

              In its second term, the Clinton administration vigorously enforced a provision
              of the Clean Air Act requiring companies to install the most advanced
              pollution controls on any new sources of emissions, whether the pollution
              comes from new plants, existing ones that increase their output or old plants
              that reopen.

              The energy industry says this enforcement has stifled its efforts to expand
              production, contributing to the energy disruptions of the last few years.

              The Bush administration has been sympathetic to the industry's argument and
              begun looking at ways to ease the environmental restraints on power plants,
              oil refineries and other sources of pollution.

              By a strange mixture of strategy and circumstance, the Cenco case, which
              has mushroomed into legal battles on both coasts, could ease them further.
              Cenco's lawyers have challenged in federal court in Washington the
              requirement that closed refineries and power plants install modern pollution
              controls when they reopen.

              J. Nelson Happy, who left his post as dean of the law school at Pat
              Robertson's Regent University to run Cenco, said that the company met all
              local environmental standards. In addition, he said, it has also settled a
              lawsuit filed by the environmental agency, providing what he said would be a
              road map for retrofitting the refinery.

              Yet environmentalists were able to get Judge Matz to block the refinery's
              operations.

              "It's an important case because it has the potential to greatly increase air
              pollution," said David G. Hawkins, a director at the Natural Resources
              Defense Council and the leader of Environmental Protection Agency's air
              pollution division in the Carter administration. "In many cases, these older
              facilities shut down to avoid putting on modern pollution controls."

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