An Oil Company With No Plan to Stop an Oil Spill

Khera Petroleum, LLC operates an oil storage facility at 631 South Gloster Street, Tupelo, Mississippi. Under the Clean Water Act and federal Oil Pollution Prevention regulations, any facility storing significant quantities of oil that sits near navigable water is required to have a written Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) Plan. This is not optional. It is federal law.

When EPA inspectors walked through Khera’s facility on February 23, 2022, they found no such plan existed. None. The company was operating tanks holding thousands of gallons of gasoline with no documented procedure for what to do if anything went wrong.

The absence of a written plan was just the beginning. The inspection uncovered eight additional, separate violations, all existing simultaneously at the same facility, painting a picture of systematic neglect that went far beyond a paperwork oversight.

Nine Failures. One Facility. Years of Risk.

The EPA’s documented violations read like a checklist of everything a petroleum operator must do — and Khera skipped every item. Each failure below is a real, physical condition that existed at the Tupelo facility when inspectors arrived:

• No written Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure Plan — the foundational document required by law.
• Holes, cracks, or voids in diked containment walls — the physical barriers designed to catch a spill before it reaches the ground.
• Bulk storage containers never tested or inspected for structural integrity.
• No records of inspections or tests maintained — meaning there is no way to know how long conditions were this bad.
• Oil-water separators not frequently inspected to detect failures that could cause a discharge.
• Mobile and portable containers had no secondary containment provided.
• Pipe terminal connections not marked, capped, or flanged when out of service.
• Aboveground piping, valves, joints, and pipe supports not inspected regularly.
• No warning devices present to prevent vehicles from damaging aboveground piping during transfer operations.

Personnel handling oil were also never trained as required by law. Records of dike drainage events were never generated. Buried piping lacked required protective coatings and corrosion protection. The violations covered every layer of the facility: the containers, the pipes, the containment systems, and the people.

The Path to the Gulf: How One Spill Becomes Everybody’s Problem

The EPA’s own findings confirmed that a spill at the Tupelo facility would not stay local. Drainage runs from the property approximately 3,000 feet before reaching Kings Creek. From there, the water flows into Town Creek, then the Tombigbee River, then the Mobile River, and directly into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Tombigbee River serves communities across Mississippi and Alabama. The Mobile River feeds Mobile Bay, one of the most ecologically productive estuaries on the Gulf Coast, supporting commercial fishing, wildlife, and drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. Every cracked containment wall at Khera’s Tupelo property was a threat that extended hundreds of miles downstream.

The EPA formally found that the facility “could reasonably be expected to discharge oil and/or other pollutants to Kings Creek” in quantities that would violate water quality standards or cause visible oil sheens on the water. That is the legal standard for serious, harmful contamination. Khera met the definition of a facility that posed that exact risk.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What $1,000 Doesn’t Cover

There is a person whose name appears on this legal document as Khera Petroleum’s contact: Kaye Sukhjit, reached at a Yahoo email address, with a post office box in Tupelo. This is the face of the respondent. No army of lawyers, no PR department, just a small Mississippi petroleum company that stored nearly 2,380 barrels of gasoline (enough to fill over 100,000 gas tanks) in infrastructure the company never bothered to test, inspect, or plan for in the event of a failure.

The people living downstream from Khera’s Tupelo facility never voted on whether to accept that risk. The families who fish and swim in Kings Creek, the farmers who draw water near the Tombigbee River, the communities in Mobile Bay who depend on a living estuary for their livelihoods — none of them were consulted. The cracked containment walls at 631 South Gloster Street were making decisions for all of them, silently, for years before any inspector showed up.

The Clean Water Act’s SPCC regulations exist precisely because a spill from a facility like this would create a visible oil sheen, cause sludge to deposit beneath the water surface, and potentially destroy the water quality for miles of navigable waterway. That is the legal standard EPA cited. In plain terms: a failure at Khera’s facility could have coated the surface of Kings Creek in gasoline-tainted water, killed aquatic life, contaminated bank soil, and pushed a plume of petroleum contamination through four interconnected waterways toward the Gulf Coast.

The tanks were never integrity tested. That phrase sounds bureaucratic, but here is what it means in practice: no one at Khera ever formally verified that the containers holding thousands of gallons of gasoline were structurally sound. The piping was never regularly inspected. The containment walls had holes and cracks. The oil-water separators, which are meant to catch petroleum that escapes into drainage water, were not being monitored. The people handling oil on-site were never trained in spill response. Every single layer of protection that federal law requires was either broken, absent, or ignored.

No spill is documented in the source materials as having occurred. But the question is whether the absence of a catastrophe is the same as the absence of harm. Communities do not get to know how close they came. They do not get a notification that their watershed was one corroded pipe joint away from a contamination event. They find out after the fact, if they ever find out at all. That is the harm the $1,000 penalty does not, and cannot, address.

The settlement document notes that Khera “neither admits nor denies” the factual findings. The company did not contest the violations in any proceeding. It waived its right to a jury trial, waived its appeal rights, and agreed to pay one thousand dollars. For a company operating an oil storage facility with total tank capacity of 2,380 barrels of gasoline, $1,000 (roughly the cost of two car payments on a used Honda) is the price of nine simultaneous federal violations and years of unchecked risk to a waterway system connecting Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Legal Receipts: The Words They Signed

Straight From the Government’s Own Documents

“Drainage from the Facility travels down gradient for approximately 3,000 feet before entering Kings Creek, a relatively permanent water, which flows to Town Creek, which flows into the Tombigbee River. The Tombigbee River flows into the Mobile River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Findings of Fact, Paragraph 24

“At the time of the EPA inspection, there was no written SPCC Plan for the facility… there were holes, cracks, or voids in diked containment walls… bulk storage containers were not tested nor inspected for integrity in accordance with industry standards… records of inspections and tests were not maintained.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Findings of Fact, Paragraph 25 (a–d)

“Due to its location, the Facility could reasonably be expected to discharge oil and/or other pollutants to Kings Creek and/or their adjoining shorelines in quantities that would (a) violate applicable water quality standards or (b) cause a film or sheen upon or discoloration of the surface of the navigable waters of the United States or adjoining shorelines or cause a sludge or emulsion to be deposited beneath the surface of such water or adjoining shorelines.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Alleged Violations, Paragraph 32

“Respondent failed to prepare an SPCC Plan (‘Plan’) in accordance with 40 C.F.R. §§ 112.7, 112.8, and any other applicable sections of 40 C.F.R. Part 112, as required by 40 C.F.R. § 112.3(a).”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Alleged Violations, Paragraph 35

“Respondent consents to the payment of a civil penalty, which was calculated in accordance with the Act, in the amount of $1,000.00, which is to be paid within thirty (30) calendar days of the Effective Date of this CAFO.”

— EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Terms of Payment, Paragraph 42

Societal Impact Mapping

Environmental Degradation

Kings Creek is classified in this document as a “relatively permanent water” — meaning it holds water year-round and functions as a genuine ecosystem habitat, not a seasonal ditch. It connects to Town Creek and the Tombigbee River, a major waterway running through the heart of the Deep South. The Tombigbee flows into Mobile Bay, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has identified as one of the most biologically diverse estuaries in North America.

Gasoline contains benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene — chemicals that are acutely toxic to fish, amphibians, and invertebrates even in very small concentrations. An oil sheen on the surface of Kings Creek, which the EPA’s own legal standard describes as a foreseeable outcome of a spill at this facility, can deprive the water of oxygen, block sunlight from reaching aquatic plants, and coat the gills of fish. These are not hypothetical effects; they are the documented consequences of petroleum contamination in freshwater systems.

The facility held approximately 2,380 barrels of gasoline, which translates to roughly 99,960 gallons (about enough to fill the fuel tanks of 5,000 average cars). Cracked containment dikes, untested tanks, and uninspected piping meant that a structural failure of even one tank could have sent a substantial volume of gasoline directly into the drainage pathway leading to Kings Creek. No secondary containment was in place for mobile containers. No regular piping inspections would have caught a slow leak before it became a large one.

The buried piping at the facility lacked required protective coatings and cathodic corrosion protection. Underground pipes corrode silently. Without the protective measures federal law mandates, corrosion can create pinhole leaks or catastrophic breaks that release petroleum into the soil and groundwater long before anyone notices. Soil contamination from petroleum products can persist for decades, leaching into groundwater and eventually into surface water systems.

Public Health

The Tombigbee River and its connected waterways serve as recreational and subsistence fishing resources for communities throughout Mississippi and Alabama. People fish, kayak, and wade in these waters. Communities of color and low-income communities along the Tombigbee and Mobile River systems have historically relied on these waters for food and recreation at higher rates than wealthier, whiter communities who have more options. A petroleum contamination event flowing through this system would reach the people who can least afford to replace a food source or relocate away from contaminated land.

Benzene, a component of gasoline, is a known human carcinogen. Long-term exposure through contaminated drinking water or fish consumption is linked to leukemia and other blood cancers. Toluene exposure is associated with neurological damage, particularly in children. Xylene affects the central nervous system and kidneys. These are the compounds that would have entered the waterway system in the event of a spill from Khera’s unprotected facility. The oil-water separators that are supposed to catch petroleum before it enters drainage systems were not being inspected for failures at the time of the EPA investigation.

No trained personnel were on-site to respond to a spill if one occurred. The company had no written emergency response plan. In a real discharge event, the first moments matter enormously. Containment and cleanup in the first hours of a spill can limit the downstream spread of contamination. Without trained staff, without a plan, and without functional containment infrastructure, a spill at the Tupelo facility would have been uncontrolled from the moment it started.

Economic Inequality

The penalty in this case was $1,000 (roughly the cost of two car payments on a modest used vehicle). The Clean Water Act authorizes Class I penalties of up to $25,000 per day per violation (enough to cover a month’s groceries for over 2,000 families) for facilities that fail to comply with SPCC regulations. With nine separate documented violations, the theoretical maximum exposure for Khera was substantial. The final penalty represents a fraction of a percent of what the law permits.

This is the enforcement math that small communities near petroleum facilities live with. A company can operate with cracked containment walls, zero spill plans, and untested tanks for years. If an inspector shows up, the penalty that follows is roughly equivalent to a parking ticket compared to what the law allows. The economic incentive to invest in compliance — when the worst-case enforcement outcome is $1,000 — is negligible. The people downstream bear the risk; the company bears a cost they could cover with a single day’s cash flow.

The document notes that Khera signed its agreement via a contact reachable at a personal Yahoo email address, suggesting this is a small, independent operation rather than a multinational corporation. But the size of the company does not shrink the size of the waterway at risk, and it does not reduce the toxicity of a gasoline spill in Kings Creek. Small operators storing hazardous quantities of petroleum in under-resourced communities are precisely the scenario the SPCC program was designed to regulate. The enforcement outcome here sends a clear signal to every similar operation about what the actual cost of non-compliance is.

The Cost of a Life: Breaking Down the Numbers