A strong sulfur smell from Marathon Petroleum’s oil refinery in East-Central El Paso on Aug. 4 brought a flurry of complaints from area residents and from one El Paso politician challenging the company’s pending air-permit renewal.
It comes four months after a fire at the refinery also garnered attention as big plumes of black smoke emanated from the facility.
The strong odor, which traveled to several areas of Central El Paso, came from liquid hydrocarbons released from a refinery storage tank, refinery officials told El Paso Commissioner David Stout and El Paso City Rep. Josh Acevedo, according to reports from the two politicians representing the refinery area.
Liquid hydrocarbons were not defined, but are likely either gasoline, diesel fuel, or crude oil.
In a statement released to the El Paso Times, Marathon officials said, “The source of the odor was identified and teams addressed the situation.”
“Air monitoring was deployed in the community as a precaution and did not detect readings that indicate health risks.”
Marathon officials did not immediately respond to additional questions about the incident.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, the state’s environmental regulator, also did not immediately have information about the incident.
Stout said this incident bolsters the county’s pursuit of a trial-like, contested-case hearing before a state administrative judge on Marathon’s application to renew and amend the refinery’s major air permit.
Marathon is fighting the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s three commissioners’ June order to hold a contested-case hearing.
Linda Favela, a resident near the refinery, said in a statement that the Corbin Sambrano neighborhood experienced “undeniably strong fumes” on the night of Aug. 4 and her family was kept awake by alarms and sirens at the refinery.
“As usual, we didn’t get a notification explaining to us what was going on or what precautions we should take to protect our health . . . .,” Favela said in a statement released by the Sembrando Esperanza Coalition, a group of nine historic El Paso neighborhoods.
“People called the only publicly available number for Marathon, 915-775-3300, and no one answered,” Favela said.
The neighborhood coalition in July 2025 asked refinery officials to create an alert system for residents near the refinery and to provide a phone number for people to call anytime problems occur at the refinery, according to a coalition statement.
Favela was one of several residents near the refinery who told TCEQ officials at a January meeting about frequent episodes of odors and fumes coming from the refinery. The meeting was held as part of the state agency’s review of Marathon’s permit renewal application filed in December 2023.
Stout said it took his office almost 1½ hours to find out what was happening at the refinery the night of Aug. 4 after contacting refinery officials.
“I am deeply concerned, not only regarding the incident that occurred last night at the refinery, but also with the lack of information and transparency provided to local officials who represent the area, and especially the residents who live nearby,” Stout said in his Aug. 5 statement.
“This incident did not only affect people living in the immediate vicinity of Marathon; strong odors were also reported in neighborhoods as far north as Five Points and Manhattan Heights, and nobody knew what was happening,” Stout said.
More: 25-acre pond almost done in Northeast El Paso as a result of 2006 floods
The odor episode comes after public attention also was sparked by an April 10 fire at the refinery. It was extinguished by “trained teams,” with no injuries and no indication of off-site air-quality problems, Marathon officials reported in an April 13 statement to the El Paso Times.
Refinery officials later determined a seal failure on a piece of refinery equipment caused the fire.
A TCEQ investigation on April 22 received Marathon’s explanation of the fire, and the agency investigator determined the fire generated no industrial or hazardous waste and no off-site environmental impacts were found. Marathon deployed its air monitoring team in response to the fire, a TCEQ report stated.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 915-546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on X, and @vkolenc.bsky.social on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso residents demand answers after Marathon refinery odor spreads
Reporting by Vic Kolenc, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Vic Kolenc, El Paso Times | USA TODAY Network
