Repost from OilPrice.com [Editor: This article appears in OilPrice.com with a completely misleading title. The report is highly informative about the Trump administration’s stripping of regulatory oversight of the energy industry. This news is alarming and should be taken seriously by environmentalists. SIGNIFICANT QUOTE: “…there is still a wide margin for risk if a tank of LNG were ruptured or caused in any other way to come into contact with air. When exposed to air, the liquefied natural gas will rapidly convert back into an ultra-flammable gas and begin to evaporate.” See also: Google coverage of Trump’s executive order. – R.S.]
[MISLEADING TITLE…] Environmentalists’ “Bomb Train” Concerns Are Overblown
By Haley Zaremba – Apr 13, 2019, 12:00 PM CDT
This week president Donald Trump signed two executive orders aimed at speeding up the development and functionality of oil and gas projects in the United States. The orders will ease the process of building new oil and gas pipelines and put up extra hurdles for state agencies that want to intervene, a move immediately decried by many state officials and environmentalists.
The executive orders are intended to curtail officials’ power to limit the oil and gas sector at the state level by changing federal agencies’ issued instructions, or “guidance”. One executive order further includes a directive to curb shareholder ballot initiatives concerning environmental and social policies, while the second order, focused on border-crossing energy projects, takes the power to approve or deny pipelines and other infrastructure crossing over the country’s borders away from the Secretary of State and gives the responsibility wholly to the president.
Furthermore, President Trump’s executive action also specifically directs the Department of Transportation to change its rules concerning the transport of natural gas, requiring the agency to permit the shipment of liquefied natural gas by rail and by tanker truck. This detail of Wednesday’s executive orders has already proven to be extremely divisive. The directive would open up new markets with major demand for U.S. natural gas but moving the potentially explosive substance by rail could cause potentially catastrophic accidents if one of these train cars were to derail.
Despite the risks, the move is counted as a major victory for railroads and the natural gas sector, which have been lobbying for years for just this sort of initiative. Proponents of the order argue that it’s necessary to deliver natural gas to the needy Northeast, where there are not sufficient pipelines to meet demand. They also argue that delivering more natural gas to the U.S. Northeast via road and rail would make it possible to use LNG to power ships and trains. One such advocate, head of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas trade group Charlie Riedl, told Bloomberg that “there are all sorts of new opportunities where you can use rail much more efficiently.”
The initiative has other potential benefits as well, such as offsetting the steep decline of coal shipments by rail, but for many, the drawbacks far outweigh all these silver linings. You don’t need to look too far to find plenty of cautionary tales from previous experiments in sending oil and gas by rail, from spills, explosions, and accidents to a runaway oil train in Quebec that killed nearly 50 people when it derailed in a small town in 2013.
The natural gas that would be shipped in train cars and tanker trucks will be chilled to 260 degrees Fahrenheit below zero (-167 Celsius) and is extremely space efficient, taking up just 1/600th of its volume in a gaseous state. This form of liquefied natural gas is already being shipped all around the world all the time, including within the U.S., where it is driven in trucks to storage facilities.
In this liquefied, super-chilled state, natural gas is not flammable on its own and cannot be ignited and is actually considered much safer to ship than crude oil. While that sounds like any cause for alarm and cries of “bomb trains” is overblown, however, there is still a wide margin for risk if a tank of LNG were ruptured or caused in any other way to come into contact with air. When exposed to air, the liquefied natural gas will rapidly convert back into an ultra-flammable gas and begin to evaporate.
One staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, Emily Jeffers, told Bloomberg that Trump’s plan to ship natural gas by rail is a “disaster waiting to happen,” going on to say that under the guidelines of the executive order “you’re transporting an extraordinarily flammable and dangerous substance through highly populated areas with basically no environmental protection.”
Repost from Bloomberg [Editor: Spectacular photos – click to enlarge. – R.S.]
Swedish forest fires, retreating glaciers and arid cropland attest to a new reality.
By Jonathan Tirone, April 9, 2019, 5:05 AM PDT
Dust, sand and smoke hang over Portugal and Spain as seen from the International Space Station on 6 August 2018. Source: ESA
Climate change is picking up pace in Europe, thrusting farmers and power generators onto the front lines of a battle with nature that threatens to upend the lives of the half billion people who occupy the world’s biggest trading bloc.
Last year was the third hottest on record and underlines “the clear warming trend” experienced in the last four decades, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which operates a network of satellites for the European Union that collects weather, soil, air and water data.
Copernicus lenses captured dozens of images illustrating how climate change is unfolding on Europe’s landscape. The images were made available to coincide with a gathering of 15,000 scientists in Vienna at an annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union, which assesses the issue each year.
The convention in the Austrian capital is a locus of discovery, where scientists present research and compare notes. The European Space Agency, which operates the Copernicus network, is boosting its 2019 presence after it developing a series of open-source data tools designed to help economies adapt to the hotter and drier seasons already impacting crop yields, power generation and river transport.
Heatwaves and little rain led to rarely seen forest fires in Sweden in July 2018. Source: ESA
Rainfall across central and northern Europe was 80 percent below average levels, resulting in agricultural losses and wildfires. Satellite photos showed dozens of Swedish forests burning in July that destroyed more than $100 million worth of woodland.
“As temperatures rose during the year, so did the duration of sunshine,” Copernicus said in a statement. “Parts of central and northern Europe experienced up to 40 percent more sunshine hours than average with Germany being the sunniest on record.”
Cloudless days let Copernicus snap this shot across the 1,200-km Alps. Source: ESA
Not all of the impacts are negative. The preponderance of cloudless days in northern Europe helped Germans generate a record amount of solar power last year. Their 45 gigawatts of installed capacity provided Europe’s biggest economy with some 9 percent of its electricity while forcing utilities to integrate more variable flows of power from renewables onto their grids.
But that sunshine took a toll on another source of European power—hydroelectricity. Alpine glaciers, whose melting waters help top off hydro power plants across Austria and Switzerland, are disappearing at a faster pace.
“Glacier retreat would have a large impact on the Alps since glaciers are an important part of the region’s ecosystem, landscape and economy,” said Harry Zekollari, a climate scientist in Switzerland. “They attract tourists to the mountain ranges and act as natural fresh water reservoirs. Glaciers provide a source of water for hydroelectricity, which is especially important in warm and dry periods.”
Copernicus data show aridity is likely to deepen and spread through mid century. Source: Copernicus Climate Change Service operated by ECMWF
It’s because of those long-term weather trends that that the EU is trying to get more policy makers and businesses to use satellite data and imagery to help planning. Its data feeds Barcelona’s Vortex SL, which aids renewable energy developers to find places with the best wind currents and weather patterns before installing turbines and panels. Marex Spectron Group Ltd.use Copernicus data in forecasting coffee, sugar and cocoa yields. The EU project said it even helped Heineken NV brew a better beer by lowering the amount of water it needs in the process.
Lush Belgian fields in July 2017 were scorched by heat a year later. Source: ESA
The pain felt by European farmers was evident from space, according to Copernicus, which published images showing how the normally lush cropland of central and northern Europe were burnt crisp by heat and lack of rain.
“Dry conditions were especially persistent in Germany, where the April-September period was the second-driest on record, leading to heavy agricultural production losses,” the scientists wrote.
In order to avoid the catastrophic effects of runaway climate change—rising seas, super-storms, famine and war—the world needs to invest some $2.4 trillion a year through 2035 in order to cut fossil fuel emissions. Even a rise of 1.5 degrees would have massive consequences, including a “multi-meter rise in sea levels” over hundreds to thousands of years and a mass extinction of plants and animals.
Different crop types around Emmelrod in the Netherlands. Green shows summer crops, red is potatoes, orange is market crops, yellow is cereals and blue depicts grassland. Source: ESA
To avoid the worst outcomes posed by living on a hotter and drier planet, Copernicus is trying to help farmers by giving them access to satellite images overlaid with data, which could help agriculture identify crop strains that can keep up with the changing climate.
Countries need to “develop and consolidate innovative approaches, tools and methods for characterizing high-impact events and quantify loss and damage,” according to the World Meteorological Organization’s state of the climate report.
Farm runoff silting up the bay by Mont-Saint-Michel during planting season. Source: ESA
Repost from KQED The California Report [Editor: UPDATE AS OF APRIL 12, 2019: According to sources, the refinery’s partial shutdown will continue for maybe another month. Valero reports that they will not be back online until sometime between early and mid May. – R.S.]
Valero’s March Pollution Release Exposes Weaknesses in Benicia’s Air Monitoring System
By Ted Goldberg, Apr 10, 2019
A plume containing petroleum coke dusts wafts from a smokestack at Valero’s Benicia oil refinery on March 23. (Sasha Khokha/KQED)
When a major malfunction caused Valero’s Benicia refinery to spew out pollution last month, leading city officials to warn residents with respiratory issues to stay indoors, the agency that regulates air in the Bay Area had to send a van to monitor the situation.
That’s because there is no stationary air monitoring device in Benicia’s residential areas, even though the city is home to one of the largest refineries in California.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District took a series of air samples, but none during the height of the emergency that Sunday morning of March 24, when a plume of black smoke filled the air for hours, convincing officials to issue a health advisory.
Several people called 911 to report breathing problems at the time of the refinery breakdown. The air district said it received about a dozen complaints.
There’s also no evidence that Valero monitored the air in those residential areas during the time period when the releases were most extreme.
The refinery problems sent soot into the air and followed two weeks of more minor releases that regulators thought were tapering off. The plume that morning eventually led Valero to shut down a large part of its facility, a move that has contributed to the increase in the cost of gas statewide in recent weeks.
Several public agencies and companies conducted air monitoring work to measure for a variety of chemicals that may have spewed from the refinery’s stacks.
Some local officials say those tests may prove that, for the most part, elevated levels of particulate matter and toxic gases did not waft into nearby residential neighborhoods.
Indeed, it looks so far like the pollution was not as bad as the extreme release of toxic sulfur dioxide that accompanied Valero’s May 2017 power outage, one of the Bay Area’s worst refinery accidents in years.
This just got more serious. The @CityofBenicia has issued an advisory for all residents with respiratory issues to go inside because of the problems at @ValeroEnergy. ‘The concentration of particulate matter has become significantly higher over the past day.’ @KQEDnewshttps://t.co/cdDjTcV5x1
But Benicia’s mayor, along with a leading air quality expert and two local environmentalists, say these most recent releases confirm that the small North Bay city needs a more robust and coordinated strategy to measure what gushes out of its largest employer.
“It seems that right now, if there’s an incident, what happens is folks kind of drive around and see if they can catch the plume,” said Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at UC Davis.
The refinery malfunctions began on March 11. Two days later, Valero hired an Arkansas-based consulting firm, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH), to take air samples around the refinery to test for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter.
During eight consecutive days of testing, the firm detected more than a thousand small readings for particulate matter less than 10 microns wide and 2.5 microns wide, known as PM 10 and PM 2.5, respectively.
That work ended when regulators and Valero believed the releases were coming to an end. On March 23, petroleum coke began again belching from the refinery’s stacks.
But the CTEH did not restart air sampling until the following afternoon, well after the health advisory had ended and officials told the public the air was OK.
Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney with the Oakland-based Center for Biological Diversity, said it’s concerning that the CTEH data does not include the time period during the height of the releases.
“There is a huge gap of data that we are missing,” Kretzmann said.
A CTEH spokesman referred questions to Valero, which declined to answer questions about the firm’s work.
Valero runs fence line monitors around the refinery, but the site that publishes its data includes a warning that all of its measurements should be considered “questionable until further notice” because several of its parts require adjustments before they can produce reliable and accurate data.
Air district monitoring efforts
On March 24 and 25, BAAQMD inspectors drove the agency’s mobile monitoring van near the refinery to measure for hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as benzene, toluene and butadiene.
The agency compared those concentrations for acute, chronic and work-time exposure to state health standards, according to Eric Stevenson, the district’s director of meteorology and measurements
“What we saw in these results was nothing above those levels,” Stevenson said. “That being said, we did them on Sunday after a lot of the worst visual impacts were detected.”
Stevenson said the district did not collect air monitoring data when the health advisory was in effect in order to protect the health of its staff and because county officials did not request it.
“When the health department declares a shelter in place, we do our best to provide any information that they request. They didn’t request any information from us prior to that shelter in place,” Stevenson said.
Solano County spokesman Matthew Davis confirmed that the county did not request tests from the air district before it issued the health advisory.
‘”All of the air readings up to that point, during and afterwards, were ‘good’ to ‘moderate’ and at no time did the county or CTEH results show ‘unhealthy’ levels for sensitive individuals or the general public,” Davis said.
Elevated particulate levels
However, an air monitoring log from the Benicia Fire Department shows six occurrences when particulate readings were elevated in the early morning hours before the advisory. Fire crews did not take any samples during the hours-long health advisory.
“The fire department’s monitoring shows particulate matter pollution repeatedly spiked to very high levels, far higher than what would be considered safe for daily air quality,” Kretzmann said. “It raises big concerns for vulnerable people, like kids with asthma.”
The fire department’s log also includes several instances in which crews noted moderate to strong petroleum byproduct odors.
“This is concerning since those could be toxic,” said Wexler, the UC Davis air quality expert.
By the time Solano County inspectors restarted tests that morning, at 9:45 a.m., the particulate levels had dropped.
The county also tested areas in the refinery on one day to determine whether high levels of heavy metals were in the petroleum coke dust coming from the stacks.
Those tests revealed that the releases did not include elevated levels of heavy metals, according to Jag Sahota, the county’s environmental health manager.
Calls for change
“You can’t fix what you don’t know,” Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson said in an interview on Monday.
Patterson said the city needs a stronger air monitoring program, money to run it and expertise to understand it, similar to the one in Richmond, where Chevron’s refinery is located. A program there provides air quality readings from monitors in three neighborhoods.
“It’s not helpful if you don’t know the full extent of the public impact,” said Patterson. “If you don’t have the personnel and you don’t have the funds and you don’t have a clear path of information, you don’t know what’s going on. You can’t take measures to protect public health and safety.”
Wexler agrees.
“We really need to surround the plant with monitors in the neighborhoods where people are living and breathing,” he said. “If the facility can’t get control of its situation, it should incur some costs to protect the people who live in the region.”
Andres Soto, a Benicia resident and organizer for Communities for a Better Environment, said the city has gone too long without an efficient and robust air monitoring program.
“We need to have a very comprehensive monitoring system that is looking at both the greenhouse gases as well as the particulate matter,” Soto said. “We needed to do that 10 years ago. It’s beyond critical.”
Kretzmann, from the Center for Biological Diversity, said the refinery and air district do not have a plan in place to capture the most critical data when pollution threatens Benicia residents.
“There’s no telling what information we’re missing, and the community still doesn’t know the true extent of danger it’s facing,” he said. “The city needs a system that can accurately and comprehensively measure air pollution when dangerous events occur.”
More monitoring on the horizon
The air district said it’s planning to add monitoring stations to areas near all five of the Bay Area’s refineries.
“These stations will be sited to help evaluate and track refinery emission impacts in the surrounding communities,” said air district spokesman Ralph Borrmann, adding that the agency is “identifying and attempting to secure suitable space for the site in Benicia.”
Valero also plans to help fund work on community monitoring devices, as part of a 2003 settlement with a local environmental group. That group, called the Good Neighbor Steering Committee, is planning to hire staff to run a community air monitoring device in the city’s northwest corner.
That might ease the community’s concern but not lead to the best data, said Dr. Bela Matyas, Solano County’s health officer.
“More monitors would clearly give more refined information,” Matyas said. “But in places where that’s been done, that does not yield more accurate estimates of risk over the long term over that area.”
During major incidents, like Valero’s recent malfunction, he added, mobile air monitoring is still necessary to capture data that a stationary device would not be able to collect.
Vallejo Times-Herald, By John Glidden, April 10, 2019 at 6:33 pm
Apparently, tired of waiting to receive cooperation from Vallejo Marine Terminal (VMT), City Hall sent official notice on Wednesday informing representatives with VMT and Orcem Americas that city staff determined the project application has been abandoned.
Staff wrote that the lack of information and collaboration from VMT is preventing City Hall from finalizing the project’s final environmental impact report (FEIR) and presenting it before the City Council for certification under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
“As you know this is required for the VMT/Orcem Project. Without clarity or cooperation from VMT, the City has now determined that the VMT/Orcem Project application has been abandoned,” wrote Snannon Eckmeyer, assistant city attorney. “City staff intends to recommend denial of the appeal.”
Release of the city’s letter comes just a day after all three sides failed to meet as previously scheduled. Krista Kim, the attorney representing VMT principals Alan Varela and William Gilmartin, informed city staff and Orcem via an email sent out at 2:20 a.m. Tuesday morning that a calendar error would cause her to skip Tuesday’s meeting.
“I was going to attend on VMT’s behalf but I just got back from vacation this morning and realized my flight to DC is actually Tuesday morning at 6 a.m., rather than Wednesday at 6 a.m. as I had on my calendar,” Kim wrote in an email shared with the Times-Herald. “Thus, I am actually heading to the airport in an hour or so and regret having to send this late cancellation.”
That, in turn, caused Orcem Americas President Steve Bryan to cancel his Tuesday morning flight from Houston to Sacramento.
“I assumed the meeting had been cancelled and I cancelled my flight and returned home,” Bryan wrote in an email to City Manager Greg Nyhoff after receiving Kim’s message.
City Hall wasn’t amused, re-iterating VMT continually failed to provide information about its control of the South Vallejo land both businesses hope to build on. In addition, city staff said they have sought Varela’s and Gilmartin’s signatures on an indemnification and assignment and assumption agreement, which staff say is needed to continue the appeal.
“Without clarity from VMT on if it wants to proceed with the application appeal process, the City cannot determine if several of the mitigation measures we have discussed are feasible,” staff wrote. “We have not received the barge implementation strategy and fleet management plan data from VMT, which is also necessary for certain mitigation measures. Neither VMT nor Orcem signed the reimbursement agreement necessary to complete the environmental justice analysis and to release the associated funding.”
All three sides met on March 26 to discuss the various topics, including VMT’s claim that city leaders are confused over the metes and bound descriptions regarding the city ground lease between Vallejo and VMT, and another section of land, Parcel 1, which VMT says it owns in fee.
According to the same city letter, both sides agreed to meet again in April to allow VMT time to gather the appropriate documents.
“At that (March 26) meeting, the VMT applicants requested we meet in person on April 9, 2019, to which you all agreed. The purpose of the delay was to allow all of you time to gather documents to support your position and bring resolution about how to move forward,” the letter reads.
However, Tuesday’s meeting never took place, due to Kim’s “error.” Attempts to reach Kim were unsuccessful on Wednesday.
Reached by email on Wednesday, Bryan said Tuesday’s meeting can be rescheduled.
“The more critical issue is that the City Attorney has now hired outside counsel to challenge VMT as to whether they even own the General Mills property,” Bryan wrote. “Seven years into the process the City suddenly does not accept that VMT owns the property project is on. The resolution of that issue has to be everyone’s urgent priority, before anything else.”
City Hall also released the unfinished draft version of the updated FEIR on March 26, stating that without the needed information from the VMT, the document is incomplete.
“The city has acted reasonably in all its attempts to get the parties to finalize outstanding issues. We have attempted to communicate with you on numerous occasions to try to get you to finalize the joint-applicant appeal,” staff wrote in a letter sent to VMT and Orcem on Wednesday. “We have received minimal communication from any of you on any of our requests.”
Vallejo Marine Terminal (VMT) wants to build a deep-water terminal, while Orcem Americas is seeking to build a cement facility. Both projects would be located on the same 31 acres at 790 and 800 Derr St. next to the Mare Island Strait in South Vallejo.
The Vallejo Planning Commission voted 6-1 in 2017 to reject the VMT/Orcem project, agreeing with City Hall that the project would have a negative effect on the neighborhood, that it would impact traffic around the area and the proposed project was inconsistent with the city’s waterfront development policy. The project also has a degrading visual appearance of the waterfront, City Hall said at the time.
City officials argued in 2017 that since a rejection was being recommended, a FEIR was not required. At the time, city leaders called the first iteration of the document a draft FEIR.
Orcem and VMT appealed the Planning Commission decision, and in June 2017 when reviewing the appeal, a majority of the then-council directed City Hall to complete the impact report.
Since then, numerous agencies have issued letters of concern with the project as they reviewed the first version of the DFEIR.
Apparently, tired of waiting to receive cooperation from Vallejo Marine Terminal (VMT), City Hall sent