Birdsfoot Delta

Mile 140.5 - LBD - Marathon Garyville Refinery, Pinnacle Polymers, and Air products and Chemicals

John Ruskey

20 Apr 2026 � 1 min read

140.5 LBD - Marathon Garyville Refinery, Pinnacle Polymers, and Air products and Chemicals

Construction began in 1973 by ECOL, Ltd. and was completed in 1976, when Marathon purchased and started up the plant. Marathon is located on 3,500 acres of former San Francisco Plantation property. Marathon is the third largest U.S. refinery with 522,000 barrels per calendar day. The refinery uses the following processes: crude distillation, hydrocracking, catalytic cracking, hydrotreating, reforming, alkylation, isomerization, sulfur recovery and coking. Producing: gasoline, petroleum distillates, fuel-grade coke, polymer-grade propylene, asphalt, propane, slurry and sulfur.

Pinnacle Polymers has a plant on the far side (from the river) of the Marathon refinery. Pinnacle Polymers produces polypropylene plastics for fiber and solid materials and can produce in excess of one billion pounds of polypropylene per year.

Air Products and Chemicals has a small plant in the Marathon complex behind the Cargill grain elevator. The plant produces hydrogen from methane (natural gas) which it supplies to the Marathon refinery as well as feeds into Air Products extensive Louisiana Hydrogen Pipeline Network. The plant produces 120,000,000 standard cubic feet of hydrogen per day.

Toxic Releases (TRI) for 2013 in pounds:

Marathon Garyville Refinery:
Air: 664,053
Water: 9,601

Pinnacle Polymers:
Air: 106,216

Air products and Chemicals:
Air: 37,970

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