A federal judge finally confirmed the Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan of Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) on Thursday. The plan includes the sale of PES’s 1,300-acre refinery complex to a real estate company — putting an end to the largest oil refining operation on the East Coast. A month earlier, dozens of Philadelphia-based climate activists made a trek to New York City to protest outside the building where a closed-door auction to sell the refinery site was being held. The activists hoped to prevent the site from being sold to a bidder with plans to keep the site running as a refinery. The following week, their wish seemed to have come true: Hilco Redevelopment Partners, a Chicago-based real estate company with a track record of turning defunct fossil fuel infrastructure into logistics centers, was the selected winner. For a moment, the future of the site looked bright. All that was […]