Monthly Archives: May 2014

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Refineries, Martinez CA, Shell Oil, Tar sands crude, Valero Benicia Refinery

Tar sands in our back yard

Repost from The Martinez News Gazette
[Editor: An excellent fact-filled summary on tar sands crude by our colleagues in the Martinez Environmental Group.  Note that Valero Benicia Refinery has admitted (in its open community meeting on March 24, 2014) that it may include tar sands crude in its “mix.”  See “NRDC report: Valero’s Magic Box.”  Also: “KPIX reports: Valero admits Tar Sands Crude, Fracked Oil could come through Benicia.”  – RS]

Martinez Environmental Group: Tar sands in our back yard

By AIMEE DURFEE & TOM GRIFFITH | May 22, 2014

Because fossil fuels are a finite resource, petroleum companies are now resorting to more extreme forms of oil extraction, including tar sands, fracking, and Arctic exploration. The tar sands are deposits of heavy crude oil trapped in sand and clay that are extracted using enormous amounts of water, as well as open pit mining, heat and horizontal wells. The largest deposit of Canada’s tar sands is along the Athabasca River in Alberta (Source: http://albertacanada.com).

Why is everyone so worried about the tar sands? First, tar sands oil extraction and production emit three times more carbon dioxide than the extraction and production of conventional oil. Second, tar sands extraction requires total destruction of pristine areas within the Canadian Boreal forest, one of the few large, intact ecosystems on Earth (Source: Friends of the Earth). Finally, the extraction of tar sands will have devastating global impacts. In a 2012 editorial in the New York Times, Jim Hansen of NASA famously wrote that if the tar sands are fully excavated, it will be “game over for the climate,” because Canada’s tar sands contain twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as has been emitted over the entire span of human history (Source: NYT! 5/9/12).

What does this have to do with Martinez? Shell Refinery in Martinez is currently receiving and processing tar sands (Source: CC Times, 6/1/13). Contra Costa County’s air is already very polluted, and this type of refining will only make it worse. Shell’s choice to refine tar sands will worsen the health of Martinez residents; pollution emanating from tar sands refineries are directly linked to asthma, emphysema and birth defects. (Source: Sierra Club, Toxic Tar Sands: Profiles from the Front Lines).

Additionally, the U.S. Geological Survey found that tar sands bitumen contains “eleven times more sulfur and nickel, six times more nitrogen, and five times more lead than conventional oil.” (Source: Environmental Integrity Project, Tar Sands: Feeding U.S. Refinery Expansions with Dirty Fuel).

But wait, there’s more … Shell also has a global role in profiting from the destruction of the climate. Royal Dutch Shell owns a whopping 60 PERCENT of the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada (Source: www.shell.com). If you Google “Athabasca tar sands,” you will see a veritable “Mordor” on Earth.

If all this makes you feel completely overwhelmed, get connected locally and join the Martinez Environmental Group. Climate change issues are happening literally in our back yard and we CAN do something about it.

If you want to stay updated on these issues and learn how to get involved, please go to http://mrtenvgrp.com/category/meetings.

California Regulation, Fracking

Letter: Moratorium on fracking in California

Repost from The Los Angeles Times, PolitiCal
[Editor: Note that Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community is among the more than 100 environmental and community groups signing on to this letter.  – RS]

Groups pressure Legislature to back California fracking moratorium

Patrick McGreevy  |  May 22, 2014

More than 100 environmental and community groups Thursday sent a letter to the California Legislature urging lawmakers to support a moratorium on the oil-production method of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in California.

Led by the national progressive group CREDO, the coalition is supporting SB 1132 by state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), which is pending in the Senate and would halt fracking to allow more studies to determine whether the method poses health hazards.

“This bill presents lawmakers with a clear-cut choice that will show whether they are on the side of oil industry lobbyists or Californians concerned about public health and safety,” said Zack Malitz, the campaign manager for CREDO. “It’s clear from the broad support across California that residents know a moratorium is the right path to protect our communities from the well-documented dangers of fracking.”

Groups that signed on to the letter include the Burbank Green Alliance, the California League of United Latin  American  Citizens, the California  League  of  Conservation  Voters, the Center  for  Biological  Diversity, and the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment.

“Given  these  techniques’  long-term  consequence  and  known  harmful  impacts  elsewhere,  it  is  entirely  appropriate  for  California  to  impose  a  moratorium  on  fracking,  acidizing  and  all  well stimulation  while  the  state  reviews  the  current  and  future  effects  here,” the letter said.

Meanwhile, a new statewide poll found that 68% of Californians support a fracking moratorium until the practice can be studied more, and that a majority would be more likely to vote for a legislator who voted in favor of such a measure.

“This poll shows that most Californians have heard about fracking, and they don’t want it to create the same problems here that it has caused in other states,” said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California. The group commissioned the poll from the firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates.

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Refineries, California Air Resources Board (CARB), California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Greenhouse gas emissions, Heavy crude, Light sweet crude, Shell Oil

Contra Costa Times editorial: Shell’s new plan may serve to blaze new trail

Repost from The Contra Costa Times
[This editorial also appeared on May 24, 2014 in the print edition of the Vallejo Times Herald.]

Contra Costa Times editorial: Shell’s new plan may serve to blaze new trail

05/22/2014
The Shell Refinery is seen in Martinez, Calif. on Monday, May 6, 2013. The Bay Area's five refineries have moved toward acquiring controversial Canadian tar sands crude through rail delivery. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)
The Shell Refinery is seen in Martinez, Calif. on Monday, May 6, 2013. The Bay Area’s five refineries have moved toward acquiring controversial Canadian tar sands crude through rail delivery. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)

Discussions about reducing California’s greenhouse gas emissions often become both heated and hyperbolic. But a plan being advanced by one of the East Bay leading refineries should be neither.

The management of Shell Oil’s Martinez refinery has decided that it can operate effectively at current levels without using heavy crude oil as a base in some of its operations. Heavy crude requires much more energy, water and heat to process than the lighter crude.

We were thrilled to learn that Shell has filed paperwork with the county regarding its intent to shut down its coker operation, one of its dirtiest processes. Shell plans to replace it with processes that handle lighter crude, but not the more volatile bakken crude.

That is, indeed, good news for Shell’s neighbors in Martinez, but it is even better news for the environment.

Shell General manager Paul Gabbard told our editorial board that the process change will cut the refinery’s greenhouse gas emissions by 700,000 metric tons a year, which he said is equivalent to taking 100,000 cars off the roads.

It is not insignificant, especially during a drought, that this process change also will cut Shell’s water use by an estimated 15 percent. That works out to a savings of about 1,000 gallons of water per minute.

There also will be about 300 temporary construction jobs for local workers as the conversion is made.

But the biggest news is that Shell officials think this change, which they hope to have completed by 2018, will allow the refinery to meet the state’s stringent standards for greenhouse gas reduction before the 2020 deadline.

In 2006 the Legislature passed AB32, California’s landmark effort to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Most oil refiners in the state were not happy about the law.

After all, the legislation was designed to dramatically reduce the levels of six different emissions that are quite often associated with the manufacture of petroleum products.

Not only did it seek to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons emitted, it sought to do so by a whopping 25 percent statewide by 2020.

Many companies moaned that its target emissions were impossible to meet. The bill implicitly acknowledged that the goals were ambitious because it instructed the California Air Resources Board to develop regulations and “market mechanisms” that could allow for industrial operations that couldn’t meet the standards to purchase pollution credits through an auction from operations that had excess credits.

But if Shell’s reckoning is correct, and we think it is, it won’t need to do that — and this action could blaze a dramatic new trail that others in the industry should consider following.

Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32), Heavy crude, Light sweet crude, Martinez CA, Shell Oil

Shell Martinez moves to clean up its act; will NOT receive crude by rail

Repost from The Martinez News Gazette
[Editor: Unconfirmed reports suggest that the light, sweet crude delivered to Shell by ship will first be transported across Canada by rail.  – RS]

Shell Martinez to shut down flexicoker, reduce green house gas emissions

Rick Jones | May 18, 2014

MARTINEZ, Calif. – In a major undertaking billed as the “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Project,” Shell is proposing to upgrade and modernize its Martinez refinery to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save water, improve efficiency, and stay relevant in the changing energy landscape, Shell representatives said Tuesday.

In a presentation to the News-Gazette staff, Shell Martinez Refinery General Manager Paul Gabbard stated the renovated refinery will become “cleaner, safer and more efficient – with less impact on the environment and our community.”

Also in attendance at the presentation was Steve Lesher, manager of communications and sustainable development; Teresa Makarewicz, health and safety director and Erin Hallissy, public affairs representative and communications.

The $450 million upgrade project will allow Shell to refine more light, sweet crude oil. With current production and transportation methods, heavy crudes have a more severe environmental impact than light ones, the representatives said. Heavy crude refining techniques require more energy input than light crude.

“In my view, in my career it’s rare when a project makes so much business sense and it makes environmental and community sense at the same time,” Gabbard said. “It’s a very nice marriage of what the world wants us to do and what we think we have to do anyway.”

The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) requires businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. Gabbard said this project gets the Shell Martinez Refinery on track for that goal.

According to Shell, the project will cut greenhouse gas emissions at the refinery by 700,000 metric tons a year – the equivalent of taking 100,000 cars off the road.

Water use at the refinery will be reduced by 15 percent, saving 1,000 gallons a minute.

A significant environmental impact of heavy crude is carbon dioxide output, which can be as much as three times that of light crude of the same quantity.

“The climate change, AB 32, required us to go more carbon friendly,” Gabbard explained. “It changes our business model. We’ve had this business model for 30 years and now we are going to change it up. What are we going to do for the next 50 years? It dovetails, in our view, to exactly what the world, state and community wants us to do.”

The project will create over 300 temporary construction jobs for local workers represented by local trade unions, reps said.

Major events conducted at the refinery where 1,500 workers are brought in for maintenance will go from four per year down to three per year, Gabbard pointed out.

The refinery, which will mark its 100th year in Martinez in 2015, receives heavy crude which requires refinement that is heavy in carbon emissions.

Gabbard said the plant will shut down the flexicoker, built in 1983, one of the major operating units in the facility. The ever-present blue flare from the coker’s column will no longer be seen.

The modernization will cut sulfur dioxide emissions by up to 25 percent, with no increase in NOx (nitrogen oxide). Electricity use will decline, and the upgrade does not expand the refinery nor increase the amount of oil processed.

“The amount of crude we bring in, the amount of product we send out, won’t change,” Gabbard said.

What will change is the amount of crude being brought in by tankers. The pipeline from the Central Valley of California brings the heavy crude type; Shell has been receiving less and less from that source as the oil fields dry up. With the change to a lighter crude, the amount of crude coming to Martinez via pipeline will drop further.

With the transport of crude by rail a significant issue in the East Bay, Gabbard was quick to say that Shell does not and will not receive crude by railway.

“We are not going to [receive] rail crude, we are not building rail crude facilities,” Gabbard said. “There will be no crude rail unloading for Shell in Martinez.”

The refinery’s physical footprint will decrease by eliminating a major processing unit. Due to higher assessed value, Shell’s property taxes will increase.

The proposed project will go through full county review, including an Environmental Impact Review (EIR). On June 3, Shell will meet with the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors to seek approval of the EIR consultant. Preliminary paperwork has already been submitted to the county. The hope is to conclude the permit process by May 2015.

Construction could start mid-2016, with the project being completed by 2018.

Shell anticipates using local labor for the project by mid-2015.