Monthly Archives: February 2016

Air Quality, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Diesel pollution, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Local Regulation, Rail Safety, San Luis Obispo County, Tar sands crude

San Luis Obispo Phillips 66 oil-by-rail hearing packed, continues next month

Repost from the San Luis Obispo Tribune

Phillips 66 oil-by-rail hearing continues next month

By Cynthia Lambert, February 25, 2016 11:11am

HIGHLIGHTS
• After a third all-day hearing, the county Planning Commission will revisit the issue March 11
• Hundreds of speakers have praised or panned the plan to bring crude oil by rail to the Nipomo Mesa refinery
• Supporters stress the refinery’s safety record and jobs; opponents cite environmental worries

A packed room listens to comments on the Phillips 66 oil-by-rail plan Thursday before the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission.
A packed room listens to comments on the Phillips 66 oil-by-rail plan Thursday before the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission. David Middlecamp

After a third all-day hearing with more than 100 speakers decrying or praising a plan by Phillips 66 Co. to upgrade its Nipomo refinery to receive crude oil by train, the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission said Thursday that no decision will be made on the project until March 11 — or even later.

The dozens of speakers Thursday were fairly evenly split on either side of the debate, with supporters stressing the need to maintain about 200 “head-of-household” jobs at the refinery, as well as its long track record of safety and that it’s been a good neighbor in the community.

“The actual crude production in California is going down, not going up,” said Richard Black, a training administrator at Phillips 66’s Rodeo refinery in the east San Francisco Bay Area. “We have to make up the difference from somewhere.”

Opponents, meanwhile, said commissioners should not take into account the company’s safety record or personal relationships. Residents and elected officials from communities along the main rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles have told commissioners they fear a catastrophic train derailment.

“Their plan is an irreversible disaster,” Nipomo resident Nora Lee said. “The effects will be felt instantly with poisonous air pollution.”

The company has applied to San Luis Obispo County to build a 1.3-mile spur with five parallel tracks from the main rail line to the Nipomo Mesa refinery, an unloading facility at the refinery and on-site pipelines.

The public has another chance to speak March 11 — county planning staff believe they’re nearing the end of public comments — and then the commissioners can ask questions, deliberate and even make a decision, or continue the process once again to a future date.

Whatever decision they make is expected to be appealed to the county Board of Supervisors, and a new round of hearings would be held.

The first two days of the Planning Commission hearing, held Feb. 4 and 5, drew hundreds of people to San Luis Obispo from around the state, with many urging the commissioners to reject the project. Planning staff has recommended denial of the project, which as proposed would allow five trains a week, for a maximum of 250 trains per year to deliver crude oil to the refinery.

Each train would have three locomotives, two buffer cars and 80 railcars carrying a total of about 2.2 million gallons of crude oil, according to county planners.

During a previous hearing day, representatives from Phillips 66 urged the commissioners to approve an alternate plan to allow three trains a week instead of five, or a maximum of 150 trains a year.

The county staff report states that three trains a week — or 150 a year — would reduce the significant toxic air emissions to no longer be considered a “Class 1 significant impact” at the refinery, which refers to the highest level of negative impacts referenced in the project’s final environmental impact report.

But emissions of diesel particulate matter would still remain a “Class 1” impact on-site, according to the staff report, and there would still be 10 “Class 1” impacts along the main rail line, such as impacts to air quality, water resources, potential demands on emergency response services and an increased risk to the public in the event of a derailment.

A few residents brought some audio-visuals along: One person showed a news clip of coverage of a massive train derailment in West Virginia last year; another played an audio recording of what he said a “typical crude oil terminal” sounds like, with train wheels squealing along tracks.

And the commission also watched a video comment from Marilaine Savard, a witness of the 2013 Lac-Mégantic, Québec, oil train disaster.

“Once an oil train derails and catches fire, you and your town will never fully recover,” she said. “Lac-Mégantic was a peaceful and beautiful community, just like San Luis Obispo.”

In response, supporters of the Phillips 66 project said that heavier crude oil — not lighter crude oil from the Bakken field in North Dakota or Canada that was linked to the Lac-Mégantic disaster and was being carried by a CSX train when it derailed in West Virginia — would be type of crude oil that would be transported and can be processed at the refinery.

The commission heard from more than a dozen Phillips 66 employees who work at the Nipomo Mesa refinery or at the company’s other facilities in California, as well as union representatives and other businesses owners and individuals in support of the project.

Rachel Penny, a safety and health professional at the Nipomo Mesa refinery, said she chose to work in the oil and gas industry because “it’s vital to the economy.”

“In order for us to continue providing energy and improving lives, we need crude oil,” she said, noting that the refinery would not be increasing the amount of crude oil processed at the refinery with the project.

“It is the safest company that I’ve ever worked for,” said Jerry Harshbarger, who works in purchasing. “We still have a strong demand for fossil fuels and stopping this project will not stop that demand.”

Another San Luis Obispo resident said the products of gas and oil could be seen throughout the room, and he urged: “We as a community should work toward how to do this.”

“You drive a car and go up to the pump,” Laura Mordaunt said. “A truck is there filled with gas that is way more volatile. Your vehicle parked in your garage is far more dangerous than this process and yet you continue to drive.”

But another local resident, Gary Lester of the opponent organization Mesa Refinery Watch Group, said Nipomo residents moved there knowing the refinery existed and are not calling for it to be closed.

“We respect you as individuals and the work you do,” he said. “We are objecting to the construction of a loud, dangerous, invasive rail terminal just 3,000 feet from our homes.”

Phillips 66 officials have said that California crude oil production is declining and the company is looking for alternate sources outside the state. According to the company’s website, “The proposed change will help the refinery, and the approximately 200 permanent jobs it provides, remain viable under increasingly challenging business conditions.”

An attorney for Phillips 66 said during a previous hearing that crude oil would still come into California by rail should the project be denied — a point that is included in the “no project” alternative as laid out in the project’s environmental impact report, Phillips 66 officials said.

An average of about 6,800 barrels a day of crude oil is already being delivered by truck from the Paloma rail unloading facility near Bakersfield to a pump station east of Santa Maria, where it is moved by pipeline to the Nipomo Mesa refinery. That could increase to 26,000 barrels a day, according to the environmental document, adding about 100 truck trips a day traveling to the pump station for unloading.

If the rail project does not move forward, it’s likely that additional out-of-state crude oil would be brought to various rail unloading terminals in California and transferred to trucks to deliver to the Santa Maria pump station, according to the environmental report.

If this happened, some impacts would be shifted to the area in and around Santa Maria: trucking would generate higher levels of air emissions, resulting in significant cancer risk to the residences in close proximity to the roads; traffic congestion impacts; and potentially significant impacts to biological and water resources from an oil spill because of a truck accident.

Crude By Rail, Derailment, Oil prices

Number of crude oil trains declined in 2015 as prices fell

Repost from the Great Falls Tribune

Number of crude oil trains declined as prices fell

The Associated Press, February 25, 2016 8:19 a.m. MST

OMAHA, Neb. — Freight railroads delivered 17 percent fewer carloads of crude oil last year after oil prices collapsed.

The Association of American Railroads said Wednesday 410,249 carloads of crude oil were carried across the United States last year, down from 493,126 carloads in 2014.

But the number of crude oil carloads remains well above the 9,500 carloads railroads hauled in 2008 before the boom took off in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana.

Oil prices have been hovering around $30 per barrel instead of the prices above $100 that were common a couple years ago.

Tank cars of crude oil have been involved in several fiery derailments in recent years. Rail accidents remain relatively rare compared to the total number of shipments, and the industry is working to reduce them.

Butane, Crude By Rail, Oil refineries, Propane

Washington refinery project dead in the water

Repost from Oregon Public Broadcasting

Port of Longview Rejects Plan For Refinery, Propane Terminal

By Tony Schick and Conrad Wilson, Feb. 23, 2016 3:08 p.m

The Port of Longview is the state's third largest port, after Seattle and Tacoma.
The Port of Longview is the state’s third largest port, after Seattle and Tacoma. Allison Frost/OPB

Port of Longview commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday morning to end talks with an energy company that wants to build the first oil refinery on the West Coast in more than 25 years.

The $1.25 billion proposal from Texas-based Waterside Energy touted 700 construction jobs and 180 full-time jobs. Waterside’s plan detailed a facility capable of refining 30,000 barrels of oil and 15,000 barrels of biofuel each day. The proposed project also included a propane and butane terminal handling 75,000 barrels per day. The plan also called for three additional trains per week carrying crude oil along the Columbia River.

The combined crude and biofuels refinery was an attempt to capitalize on the West Coast’s demand for cleaner-burning fuels.

That clean fuels component initially intrigued many, including some environmental groups and top state officials in Washington, but the financial and environmental fallout at the project backers’ failed biofuels venture in Eastern Washington ultimately raised many doubts about their latest proposal.

Longview Port Commissioner Jeff Wilson indicated the port shared doubts about the financial situation of Waterside Energy and its two subsidiaries.

“Financially I’m not comfortable with the three entities,” Wilson said.

Port commissioners said the company missed deadlines and failed to fulfill its obligation to the port.

A signed letter of intent between Waterside and the port required the company to provide certain financial information within 30 days. Port staff said those disclosures were intended to determine whether Waterside Energy had the financial backing to complete the project.

“This decision is not about fossil fuels,” Port Commissioner Doug Averett said. “It’s about the proponent not living up to his requirements and fulfilling his obligations.”

After the meeting, Longview resident Les Anderson said he was pleased with the commissioners’ actions. Anderson serves as vice president of Landowners & Citizens for a Safe Community, which has opposed other fossil fuel projects in the region.

“The community now can take a huge sigh of relief because this project was poorly conceived and pushed forward by bad actors with bad intentions,” Anderson said.

Kelso, Washington, resident Linda Horst referred to the project backers’ track record in Washington in praising the decision to reject the project.

“Bad people, bad partners for the port,” she said. “What they proposed to bring in here is something that could either kill us immediately outright through an explosion or over time, incrementally by pollution.

Waterside CEO Lou Soumas said the company had already spent $1.7 million on the project.

“We’re disappointed in the commission’s decision,” Soumas said. He added that he thought port commissioners had made their decision before they voted at Tuesday’s meeting.

“They didn’t go into the meeting without a decision in mind,” he said. “They’re doing this stuff behind closed doors.”

Soumas said Waterside was pursuing other ports and landowners in Washington and Oregon in an attempt to move the project forward.

CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, DOT-117, Explosion, National Transportation Safety Board, Positive Train Control, Tank car design, US Department of Transportation

Tougher Tank Cars Too Slow in Coming: NTSB’s Sumwalt

Repost from OH&S Occupational Health & Safety Online

Tougher Tank Cars Too Slow in Coming: NTSB’s Sumwalt

"A year after the Mount Carbon crude oil train fire, residents there know that they narrowly escaped their town becoming the American Lac-Mégantic – an outcome of a fiery derailment that could still happen at any moment," NTSB Board Member Robert Sumwalt wrote Feb. 18, 2016.
“A year after the Mount Carbon crude oil train fire, residents there know that they narrowly escaped their town becoming the American Lac-Mégantic – an outcome of a fiery derailment that could still happen at any moment,” NTSB Board Member Robert Sumwalt wrote Feb. 18, 2016.
By OH&S, Feb 22, 2016

Two important rail safety changes for which the National Transportation Safety Board has been waiting are not yet realized, and a Feb. 18 post on NTSB’s Safety Compass blog by board member Robert L. Sumwalt calls for them to be achieved.

The two are changing over U.S. railroads’ DOT-111 tanker cars that carry crude oil and ethanol so they meet the more stringent DOT-117 standard and implementing positive train control.

But DOT has decided to give railroads until 2025 to convert to the DOT-117 standard (which includes tank head shields, thicker shell material for increased puncture resistance, tank jackets and thermal protection systems with reclosing high-capacity pressure relief devices, and stronger protection for bottom outlet valves and top fittings) for those cars and until 2029 for tank carrying other flammable liquids, Sumwalt wrote.

As for positive train control, it was required to be implemented by 2015, but late last year the deadline was extended to 2018. “Some railroads have already advised the FRA they will need an extension to the extension, pushing implementation to late 2020,” Sumwalt wrote. “It takes effort and money to make changes to enhance safety, and the NTSB applauds the efforts thus far to implement PTC. But it’s time to finish the job.”

He began the post by commenting on the Feb. 15, 2015, derailment of 27 tank cars from a 109-car crude oil unit train near Mount Carbon, W.Va. “Crude oil was released from the derailed cars and immediately ignited into a pool of fire. Emergency responders evacuated 1,100 people within a half-mile radius of the accident and allowed the fire to burn itself out,” he wrote. “All of the cars involved in the Mount Carbon accident were the enhanced DOT-111 tank cars built to the industry’s CPC-1232 standard, the best available general service tank car at the time of the accident. Yet, the fire created by two punctured tank cars resulted in 13 adjacent tank cars becoming breached when heat exposure weakened their shells, which were not equipped with thermal protection systems.”

Sumwalt listed several other derailments in the United States that involved the release of flammable materials and post-accident fires, and he cited the terrible example of the derailment of a train hauling Bakken crude oil in Lac–Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013, killing 47 people.

NTSB would have preferred a more aggressive DOT-117 implementation schedule and awaits concerted efforts by the railroads to upgrade their existing DOT-111 tank cars in flammable liquids service to the new DOT-117 standard or relegate them to carrying less dangerous cargo, he added.

“A year after the Mount Carbon crude oil train fire, residents there know that they narrowly escaped their town becoming the American Lac-Mégantic – an outcome of a fiery derailment that could still happen at any moment,” he wrote.