By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Agents from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigating possible air-pollution violations spent two days searching CHEVRON (CVX.NY)owned oil facilities in Alaska, company and government officials said Thursday. Agents searched the facilities on Tuesday and Wednesday, said Andrew Ames, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He declined to provide further information.
Chevron spokesman Mickey Driver said the searches occurred at the company's Trading Bay production facility and Granite Point tank farm on the western side of Cook Inlet.
EPA is investigating air-emission compliance at those facilities, Driver said in an email.
"We have been and will continue to cooperate with the US-EPA in this matter. We have been working cooperatively with the US-EPA since 2008 in responding to inquiries regarding the Trading Bay facility," he said.
"We place the highest priority on protecting the environment. Our policies and procedures are designed to emphasize and monitor compliance with all environmental and worker-safety laws."
Officials from EPA's regional office in Seattle were not immediately available for comment.
The EPA investigation follows a similar air-pollution investigation conducted by the state, said a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
"We had an investigation," department spokeswoman Weld Royal said. "We closed it and then we referred it to EPA."
This week's EPA searches followed other recent problems at Granite Point and Trading Bay, both aged fields in Alaska's mature Cook Inlet basin.
Production from the fields was shut down for months last year because of repeated eruptions of Redoubt Volcano. The 10,197-foot volcano began erupting last March, forcing the shutdown of a nearby oil-storage and loading facility that handled Granite Point and Trading Bay oil.
That shutdown prompted the temporary cessation of Granite Point and Trading Bay production.
Oil production, which had been about 7,500 barrels a day prior to the eruptions, resumed in August.
(Editing by Michael Urquhart)