Category Archives: Flaring

Air pollution, Flaring, Sulphur dioxide, Valero Benicia Refinery

63 hours of “unscheduled flaring” at Valero Benicia; 3 bay area refinery flaring problems investigated

Repost from KQED News
[Editor:  Significant quote for Benicia: “Last Friday afternoon there was a problem at the Valero refinery in Benicia, prompting the facility to send out flares for at least the next 63 hours.  The “unscheduled flaring” released more than 500 pounds of sulfur dioxide into the air…The company will not answer any questions about the incident.”

Local Air Regulators Investigating Three Separate Recent Refinery Problems

By Ted Goldberg, June 30, 2016 (Updated 8:30 a.m., Friday to include more details of Tuesday’s upset at the Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo.)

Bay Area air regulators are looking into several recent malfunctions at Chevron’s Richmond refinery, Valero’s Benicia facility and the Phillips 66 plant in Rodeo that led each facility to send flares into the sky.

All three companies, though, are releasing little information about what caused the problems.

The most recent plant upset took place at the Phillips 66 refinery on Tuesday evening.

One of the facility’s cooling devices shut down at 6:20 p.m., prompting flaring that sent sulfur dioxide into the air, according to Randy Sawyer, Contra Costa County’s chief environmental health and hazardous materials officer.

Sawyer said that one of the water pumps that cools gases as they travel through part of the refinery malfunctioned. Initially, it was thought that one of the plant’s entire units had shut down.

The county determined that the incident did not have an “adverse acute impact on the health and safety of the community,” said Sawyer.

The flaring lasted for more than three hours, according to Ralph Borrmann, a spokesman at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

Paul Adler, a Phillips spokesman, confirmed that refinery operations were back to normal but offered no other details.

Last Friday afternoon there was a problem at the Valero refinery in Benicia, prompting the facility to send out flares for at least the next 63 hours.

The “unscheduled flaring” released more than 500 pounds of sulfur dioxide into the air, according to a report the company filed with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

The company will not answer any questions about the incident.

“It is Valero’s policy to not comment on operations or possible outages beyond what is already publicly reported,” said Lillian Riojas, a company representative.

Flaring is a practice that allows the refinery to relieve stress from inside the facility.

In the recent Valero incident, it’s unclear how long it lasted.

Josh Chadwick, division chief at the Benicia Fire Department, says the flames stopped shooting out from the refinery at 7 a.m. on Monday.

But Borrmann, the air district spokesman, says flares continued intermittently until just before midnight on Wednesday.

That afternoon, Solano County’s Department of Human Resources learned that the operation ended, said Matthew Geisert, a hazardous materials specialist with the agency.

Geisert says his department has no other details about the incident.

That lack of information frustrates local activists who have called for tighter emissions regulations for the region’s refineries.

“What we don’t know is killing us,” said Andres Soto with Communities for a Better Environment. “It’s a deliberate policy strategy to keep the media and the public ignorant of what is going on with these dangerous chemical processes at the refinery.”

A malfunction at a processing unit at Chevron’s Richmond refinery led to flaring for several hours on June 19.

Contra Costa County health officials say the county’s dispatch center got lots of calls from concerned residents, but they didn’t feel the incident was severe enough to issue any serious warnings about it.

Contra Costa , unlike neighboring Solano County, does require more information from a refinery after certain flaring operations.

Chevron filed a 72-hour report with the county’s hazardous materials program that revealed the incident was prompted by a compressor in a processing unit tripping offline. The chemicals released during that operation did not rise above state standards, the report found.

But the company will not release more information.

“I can’t share any more detail than what we’ve provided in the county report,” said Chevron spokeswoman Leah Casey.

On March 29, Chevron’s Richmond refinery had a similar issue that caused flaring. In that incident, residents throughout the region complained of a bad odor. The upset sent sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide into the air.

In the hours after the flaring took place, Chevron did not admit its refinery had a malfunction, other than to say that flaring is an important part of keeping the refinery running safely.

That prompted Sawyer to call on the company to do a better job of telling the public about problems at its local refinery.

“Chevron should be open and say they did have a problem and they’re looking at it and they’re going to investigate it and see what the problem was,” Sawyer said then.

The company said it shared with the public what it felt was important information at the time and eventually filed a report that showed one of the refinery’s monitoring devices had failed.

The air district is investigating all four incidents.

Air Quality, Fenceline communities, Flaring, Tesoro

Health advisory issued after flaring at Tesoro refinery in Martinez

Repost from KQED News

Martinez Refinery Flare Prompts Brief Contra Costa Health Advisory

By Dan Brekke, December 15, 2015 UPDATED 2:10PM
Smoke plume rises from Tesoro’s refinery in Martinez early Tuesday afternoon. Andrew / News 24-680 via Twitter)

A flaring incident at the Tesoro oil refinery in Martinez prompted Contra Costa County health officials to issue a health alert in several communities early Tuesday afternoon.

The Level 2 alert was issued for people in Martinez, Pacheco, North Concord and Clyde who have “respiratory sensitivities.”

The alert was canceled at about 1:30 p.m., after smoke produced by the flaring dissipated.

Maria Duazo, with the county Department of Health Services’ hazardous materials program, said the flaring occurred after a boiler in a unit of the refinery malfunctioned at around 12:15 p.m.

“As a result there was some black smoke that came off,” Duazo said. “It appears that some odors came off, so we have some air monitors downwind from the refinery.”

The Department of Health Services says the smoke, which was rapidly dispersed by brisk northerly winds, should not pose a hazard to most people in the area.

Just after 2 p.m., Tesoro issued a statement on the incident:

At approximately 11:47 PST this morning, Tesoro Martinez experienced a loss of our primary steam generation unit that caused upsets in several process units. These upsets resulted in flaring with visible smoke. A Community Warning System Level 2 was activated per procedure, due to the smoke drifting offsite.

There were no injuries as a result of this event. We do not expect any adverse health effects. We are working closely with Contra Costa County health personnel and other regulatory agencies.

At this time, the steam generation unit is back on-line, and the refinery is currently in stable condition at reduced rates. The refinery is no longer flaring.

Our main priority is to safely return the refinery to normal operations and to minimize the impact to the community and the environment.

As of 1400, the event has been downgraded to a CWS Level 0. Additional information will be provided as it becomes available.
The hazardous materials program is expected to require Tesoro to provide a report on the incident within the next 72 hours.

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Chevron Refinery, Flaring, Regional regulation, Violations of law

Chevron fined for air pollution at Richmond refinery

Repost from SFGate

Chevron fined for air pollution at Richmond refinery

By Kurtis Alexander, August 11, 2015 2:42 pm

Chevron has agreed to pay $146,000 in fines for spewing pollutants into the air at its refinery in Richmond, air quality regulators said Tuesday.

The penalty stems from 22 citations from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District mostly for discharging unhealthy levels of hydrogen sulfide and other harmful compounds through flaring, the process of burning off excess gas, common at industrial sites.

The refinery was also cited for excess carbon monoxide coming out of its furnace.

“Even though the incidents were minor and did not result in any significant impacts to people or the environment, we take these matters seriously, and have taken preventative measures to avoid similar situations from occurring in the future,” said Leah Casey, a spokeswoman for Chevron Corp., in an e-mail to The Chronicle.

The notices of violation were sent to Chevron between 2012 and 2014. The fines will support the air district’s enforcement work.

Bakken Crude, Flaring, Oil conditioning, Oil producers, State regulation

North Dakota legislators trying to gut recent new safety regulations

Repost from The Jamestown Sun, Jamestown, ND

Changes to energy taxes would be a blunder

By The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, Jan 22, 2015

A group of North Dakota legislators have introduced legislation aimed at gutting two of the state’s most significant regulatory decisions involving oil and gas. A bill could nullify requirements to ratchet down the massive wasteful flaring of natural gas and to impose standards to make crude oil less volatile before shipment by rail. It also would risk forfeiting $112 million in revenues during a two-year budget period. The question is why?

House Bill 1187, whose primary sponsor is Rep. Keith Kempenich, R-Bowman, is a naked attempt by a handful of legislators to override the executive function of the North Dakota Industrial Commission, comprised of the governor, attorney general and agriculture commissioner, all elected by voters statewide. Members of the Industrial Commission — after lengthy consideration and input from industry and the public — imposed regulations that will force industry to curb the massive, wasteful flaring of natural gas and to make crude oil less explosive.

Kempenich, in trying to justify his sweeping bid to weaken executive authority, complains that the Legislature was “left out of the loop” in decisions that are squarely before the North Dakota Industrial Commission as ultimate overseers of oil and gas. He glibly dismissed the flaring reduction goals — standards based on lengthy testimony with considerable input from industry — as “arbitrary,” and wants to make them go through a rule-making process that would involve lawmakers.

Where is the public clamor to roll back gas flaring? Halting progress on reducing flaring would cost an estimated $18.8 million per biennium in lost revenues. The state’s top staff regulator has said reaching the next tier of flaring reduction goals will be a “real stretch,” but officials say the Industrial Commission has leeway to grant flexibility in implementing its order, if deemed reasonable.

Where is the public outcry for softening standards to reduce the volatility of explosive Bakken crude oil? Not in Casselton, which last year dodged a massive explosion after an oil train derailment near the town. The order to “condition” oil before shipment carries an estimated cost of just 10 cents per barrel. But failure by the state to make oil safer for shipment could trigger more costly federal regulations that also could deprive the state of $93 million in revenues over a two-year budget cycle.

There is, of course, no public outcry to reverse either of these orders and send them through a legislative sideshow. Instead, Kempenich and his legislative accomplices have their ears attuned to the oil industry, which wants to exploit the drop in oil prices as an excuse to roll back sound regulations. The stewardship of North Dakota’s natural resources — and especially the safety of its citizens — shouldn’t be put in jeopardy. Lawmakers should kill Kempenich’s boondoggle.