Category Archives: Valero Benicia Refinery

Crude oil by rail discussed at Solano County Town Hall Meeting

Repost from The Reporter, Vacaville, CA

Crude oil by rail discussed at county Town Hall Meeting keeps Valero Benicia Refinery project in mind

By Melissa Murphy, 09/29/2014

A community conversation Monday night attracted about 50 people from the public, county staff and elected leaders to explore the topic of rail safety along the 73 miles of railway in Solano County, in particular as it relates to proposed increases in crude oil shipments.

Solano County Supervisor Linda Seifert said the evening was aimed at having a community conversation about the county’s preparedness and the potential impacts from any incident along local railways.

County officials said the timing of the event was two-fold. September is National Emergency Preparedness Month. In addition, the city of Benicia is considering an application that would allow Valero Refinery to receive and process more crude oil delivered by rail.

While instigated by the Valero proposal, that project, according to Solano County Supervisor Linda Seifert, is being thoroughly vetted and Solano County leadership does not have a say in the outcome.

Still, Seifert explained Valero isn’t the only refinery interested in the transportation of crude oil by rail so it’s still appropriate to discuss the possibility in Solano County.

“Hazardous materials travel through Solano County daily,” she said, adding that the government has had very little to say about the movement of that type of material by rail. “This reduces, significantly, the local ability to impose its own constraints.”

She explained that the earthquake in August that rocked the Vallejo and Napa region is just one example of how prepared and how ready the county’s first responders are when needed.

“We know emergency responders from across the county, including the Hazardous Materials Response Team, are prepared for a wide array of potential incidents,” Seifer has said. “Proposals to process crude oil delivered by rail will change the mix of materials coming into and passing through Solano County. It is only prudent for us to explore how to increase our capability to handle the risks associated with these changes.”

Chris Howe, Valero Benicia Refinery’s director of Health, Safety, Environment and Government Affairs, explained that the proposed crude by rail project would be a third means to deliver crude oil. So far, Valero receives the crude oil by marine deliveries and pipeline.

Howe explained that there are no other production changes proposed at the refinery.

“This project has the environmental benefit of lowering annual emissions including a reduction in greenhouse gases,” he said. “This project will provide flexibility to reduce the import of foreign crudes and increase the use of domestic crude oil.”

He added that preventing accidents is a “top priority” and that Valero already has exemplary safety programs, that they train for emergencies and are prepared today for emergencies inside and outside of the refinery.

Solano Office of Emergency Services also is prepared for emergencies and disasters. They already operate with a Emergency Operations Plan and Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan, according to Don Ryan, emergency services manager. Those documents are available on the county’s website, www.solanocounty.com.

Meanwhile, Antonia Juhasz, an author and investigative reporter, shed light on the actual impacts of a derailment of train cars transporting crude oil.

Photo after photo was shown of major accidents, fires and oil spills caused by crude oil train derailments.

The biggest in the country was an Alabama derailment that spilled 750,000 gallons of crude oil in November 2013 and the biggest in the world was a 1.6 million gallon spill after a derailment in Quebec in July 2013 that killed 47 people.

Juhasz said while transporting crude oil is a relatively new problem, it’s a serious problem. She said the crude oil coming from North Dakota is more flammable and combustible, a lot like gasoline, with a tendency to explode when derailed.

She said problems can be attributed to the train cars that are prone to puncture and the trains themselves.

The sticking point, she said, is the government doesn’t know how to regulate it. She also noted that Valero could expect a derailment every two years, with a major accident happening every 10 years. She also pointed to three derailments, two of which were carrying petroleum coke, since Nov. 4 2013 at the Valero refinery in Benicia.

Lois Wolk, D-Solano, also continues to push for increased rail safety.

“The volume of crude oil being imported into California has increased over 100-fold in recent years, and continues to increase,” Wolk said in a press release and noted that Valero’s plans to ship 100 train cars of crude oil a day would be through the heart of her district. “The recommendations I propose would help California keep in step with the growing risk to California’s citizens and environment posed by the significant increase in shipments of these dangerous materials.”

She has proposed reducing the recommended speed of trains carrying hazardous crude from 40 to 30 mph through all cities to reduce the risk of crashes. Wolk also proposes increasing the thickness of the shell of the car, adding top-fitting protections that can sustain a rollover accident of up to 9 mph, and installing Electronically Controlled Pneumatic brake systems to ensure faster braking for train cars.

Seifert said she was pleased with Monday’s turnout and reiterated the need for education about crude oil by rail.

“This was an opportunity for the public to learn and to start promoting the regulatory process,” she said and added that it also is an opportunity to make sure Solano County’s plan around emergency preparedness is sound.”

“This wasn’t about stopping the project, but to ensure the safety of the community,” Seifert added.

Solano County hosts community meeting on oil train safety issues [Mon. 9/29. 6pm, Fairfield]

Repost from The Vallejo Times-Herald
[Editor:  Regrettably, Solano County invited Valero Benicia Refinery and Union Pacific Railroad to make panel presentations at this “Community Conversation,” but did not invite Benicia’s officially recognized grassroots opposition organization,  Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community (BSHC) to present.  Benicia is one of seven cities in Solano County.  Language used by the County in its original announcement of this “discussion” presumed an inevitable permitting of crude by rail in our area, even as permitting is being hotly debated here.  The updated announcement is clearer, but still used the verb will rather than would: “Proposals to process crude oil delivered by rail will change the mix of materials coming into and passing through Solano County.”  Under pressure to invite an environmentalist, the County invited oil and energy analyst, author, journalist and activist Antonia Juhasz to join the panel.  Juhasz has written three books: The Bush Agenda, The Tyranny of Oil, and Black Tide.  Oddly, the County’s recently updated publicity does not mention Juhasz.  BSHC and The Benicia Independent encourage everyone to attend.
…See also the news release on the Solano County website, and a similar article in The Benicia Herald and a better one in The Vacaville Reporter.  – RS]

Solano County to host community meeting on oil train safety issues

Times-Herald staff report, 09/26/2014 

FAIRFIELD >> Solano County will host a public meeting Monday to discuss risks posed by plans to increase oil train shipments through the region.

The meeting follows concerns raised by state, regional and local government officials about plans to ship two 50-car oil trains daily from Roseville to Benicia’s Valero refinery.

The information session will be from 6 to 8:30 p.m. in the Board of Supervisors Chambers at the County Administration Center, 675 Texas St. in Fairfield.

Last week, county officials sent a letter to Benicia asking for added measures to prevent train derailments in rural areas and protected wetlands. Also, state and Sacramento regional officials have called on the city to redo its safety analysis, saying the city has overlooked the risks of increased oil train traffic through other parts Northern California and beyond.

“The evening is about having a community conversation about our preparedness and the potential impacts from an incident along our railways,” Supervisor Linda Seifert said in a press release.

Seifert said the event format — a series of brief presentations and breakout groups — will be a facilitated discussion designed to raise awareness of the existing safety measures and identify potential gaps.

Invited speakers include representatives from the Solano County Office of Emergency Services, the Solano County Fire Chiefs Association, the Valero Benicia refinery, Union Pacific Railroad, local air quality management districts and the offices of U.S. Rep. John Garamendi and state Sen. Lois Wolk. A community perspective also will be incorporated into the lineup of speakers, county officials said.

Sacramento Bee: California state and regional agencies challenge Benicia crude oil train plan

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor: to read the State’s letter and others mentioned in this article, check out Project Review.  – RS]

California officials challenge Benicia crude oil train plan

By Tony Bizjak, September 24, 2014

Brown administration officials say Benicia has underestimated the risk posed by oil trains planned to run through Sacramento and other parts of Northern California to the city’s Valero refinery, and is calling on the city to redo its safety analysis before allowing oil shipments to increase.

A letter sent to the city last week by the state’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response and the California Public Utilities Commission expresses concerns similar to those detailed in recent letters to Benicia from the Sacramento Area Council of Governments and the cities of Sacramento and Davis.

Sacramento regional leaders have accused Benicia of not adequately exploring the explosion and fire risks of a Valero Refining Co. plan to run two 50-car trains daily through downtown Roseville, Sacramento, West Sacramento, Davis and other cities to the Benicia refinery.

Julie Yamamoto, chief of the state spill prevention agency’s scientific branch and a member of the governor’s rail safety team, said state officials felt compelled to push for Benicia to do deeper study prior to project approval.

“We felt the risk analysis was sufficiently flawed and underestimates the risks,” Yamamoto said.

In its draft environmental impact report, issued earlier this summer, Benicia only analyzed oil spill possibilities on the rail line between Roseville and Benicia, even though the trains will travel from other states or even Canada. “That is a pretty big shortfall in not considering the rest of the track to the California border, and even beyond that,” Yamamoto said. State officials also have questions about how Benicia came up with the assertion that a derailed train might spill oil only once every 111 years, and therefore the risk was insignificant.

“The derailment rate looks to us to be low compared to national data,” Yamamoto said.

Benicia city officials declined to respond this week to the concerns raised by the state and local governments, but previously indicated that they limited their spill analysis to the Roseville-Benicia track section because they do not know yet which rail lines the Union Pacific Railroad may use east or north of Roseville to bring the oil into California.

State officials countered that there are only a handful of rail lines that could be used to bring the oil into the state, and all should be included in Benicia’s project risk analysis. The state noted that those rail lines pass through “high-hazard areas” where derailments are more common. In Northern California, those hazard sections are at Dunsmuir, the Feather River Canyon and near Colfax.

By issuing its letter, the state secures legal standing to sue Benicia if that city approves the project without redoing its risk studies. State officials this week declined to address the question of whether they would consider a lawsuit.

The letter from the state is one of hundreds Benicia officials said they received in the past few months in response to their initial environmental study. Benicia interim Community Development Director Dan Marks said the city and its consultants would review the comments and prepare responses to all of them, then bring those responses to the city Planning Commission for discussion at an as-yet undetermined date.

Under the Valero proposal, trains would carry about 1.4 million gallons of crude oil daily to the Benicia refinery from U.S. and possibly Canadian oil fields, where it would be turned into gasoline and diesel fuel. Valero officials have said they hope to win approval from the city of Benicia to build a crude oil transfer station at the refinery by early next year, allowing them to replace more costly marine oil shipments with cheaper oil.

Crude oil rail shipments have come under national scrutiny in the last year. Several spectacular explosions of crude oil trains, including one that killed 47 residents of a Canadian town last year, have prompted a push by federal officials and cities along rail lines for safety improvements.

SACOG and the cities of Sacramento and Davis have called on Benicia to require UP to give advance notice to local emergency responders, and to prohibit the railroad company from parking or storing loaded oil tank trains in urban areas. Local officials want the railroad to use train cars with electronically controlled brakes and rollover protection. Sacramento also has asked Benicia to limit Valero to shipping oil that has been stripped of highly volatile elements, including natural gas liquid.

Others in the Sacramento region, however, point out that rail safety is a federal issue, not one that cannot legally be dictated locally. In a joint letter, Stanley Cleveland and James Gallagher of the Sutter County Board of Supervisors said SACOG is overreaching, and a better approach would be to work with federal railroad regulators, as well as with Valero and UP, on safety issues.

The Union Pacific Railroad also has challenged the SACOG and Sacramento city perspectives, arguing that federal law pre-empts states and cities from imposing requirements on the railroads. “A state-by-state, or town-by-town approach in which different rules apply to the beginning, middle and end of a single rail journey, would not be effective,” UP officials said in a letter this month to SACOG.

State Sen. Ted Gaines, who represents much of Placer County and other rail areas, said the Valero project has his “full support.” Benicia’s analysis, he wrote, “affirms that this project is beneficial environmentally and economically and can be done safety given the prevention, preparedness and response measures in place by both Valero and Union Pacific Railroad.”

Among other commenters:

•  350 Sacramento, a local climate change group, warned that oil trains would cause an increase in carbon emissions and slow efforts to convert to renewable energies.

•  The Capitol Corridor passenger train authority, which would share tracks with the oil trains, voiced concern about the safety of passengers, crews and communities, saying the Benicia analysis doesn’t look at the impact crude oil trains would have on Capitol Corridor or Amtrak passenger trains.

• The Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District said Benicia could ask Valero to fund local mitigation programs to reduce polluting impacts of trains in the region.

•  UC Davis noted that the rail line passes through campus near the Mondavi Center and the UC Davis Conference Center, and called for additional training and equipment for Davis to deal with the possibility of a derailment and fire.

Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2014/09/24/3866089_california-officials-challenge.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

 

Highly critical reviews at close of public comment period: Valero DEIR fatally flawed

Check out these AMAZING critiques of Valero’s Draft EIR.

Here in Benicia on Friday, September 15, the final day of the public comment period, we congratulated Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community’s DEIR subcommittee for their extraordinary effort – it’s long, but you have to at least scan through it a bit.  Incredible detail and thoroughness, representing untold hours of expert volunteer labor!

If that wasn’t enough, as the day went by we were astounded when we received copies of critical comments from nearby environmental groups.  In light of these studies, no one will be surprised if the City and Valero choose to re-write and recirculate the document.  Some are saying Valero might simply withdraw the proposal.  These highly technical reviews are overwhelming, and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Valero’s DEIR is fatally flawed.  See below…  (note: many of these are very large downloads – please be patient!)

A number of individuals also submitted comments and questions at the close of the comment period.  These will be made available on our Project Review page when they are collated and published by the City.

For safe and healthy communities…