In August, RNG Energy Solutions entered into a “mutual cooperation agreement” with Philadelphia Energy Industries, a company formed by former refinery chief executive Philip Rinaldi to bid on the bankrupt refinery. Rinaldi disclosed the RNG agreement in his company’s public announcement that it would bid to buy the 1,300-acre refinery.
The plan to carve out the vacant land, located on Maiden Lane to the west of the Schuylkill Expressway, indicates that RNG intends to move ahead with its plans to build a plant that can convert more than 1,100 tons of food waste a day into methane gas.
The refinery’s future is the subject of intense public debate ahead of a January bid deadline for potential buyers. Community and environmental activists, who call the oil refinery a threat to public safety and health, are pressing the city to push for a transformation of the site to a more benign use, possibly producing renewable energy.
The 335,000-barrel-per-day refining complex, the largest refinery on the East Coast, is actually two separate refineries, but it contains a significant amount of vacant land. It is composed of more than a dozen separate parcels of land that trace their ownership to the original refineries, built by Atlantic Refining and Gulf Oil.
The 23-acre tract that was carved out for RNG Energy is part of a 248-acre property whose official address is 3143 W. Passyunk Ave., which the refinery asked to subdivide into three parcels. The largest of the three tracts, 142.5 acres, is occupied by the North Yard rail terminal, which PES built after 2012 to rapidly unload railcars carrying crude oil.