What if the wildfires raging in Fort McMurray hit the oil sands?
By Chris Sorensen, May 4, 2016
The Suncor oil sands facility seen from a helicopter near Fort McMurray, Alta. (Jeff McIntosh/CP)
The wildfires ravaging Fort McMurray are well to the south of most oil sands projects, which is why several oil sands operators volunteered to use their work camps as shelter spaces for fleeing residents. But wildfires—and fires in general—are a constant occupational threat for anyone who works in the oil and gas business, and the oil sands are no different.
In their natural state, the oil sands themselves aren’t particularly flammable. Bitumen has the consistency of molasses at room temperature, and is mixed with sand, making it burn at a slower pace if ignited (plus, 80 per cent of it is buried deep underground). But the same can’t be said of all the equipment and chemical processes used to extract and upgrade that bitumen into synthetic crude oil. Companies that mine and upgrade oil sands bitumen rely on massive pieces of machinery, high temperatures and high pressures to do the dirty work—producing fuels and feedstock.
A 2004 article in the U.S. National Fire Protection Association Journal offered a list of the potential fire risks faced by Suncor Energy, one of the oil sands’ biggest producers. It included: “hydrocarbon spill and pressure fires; storage tank fires; vapour cloud explosions; flammable gas fires; runaway exothermic reactions; and coke and sulfur fires.” The list continued by noting the fire potential posed by: “natural gas- and coke-fired electricity/steam generating plants; a large fleet of mining equipment; ore-processing and oil extraction plants; multi-story office buildings; fleets of tank trucks carrying combustible and hazardous commodities; and the wildlands and boreal forests that surround the facility.”
On that last point, Chelsie Klassen, a spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says oil sands companies have “had production reduced or shut in because of wildfires in the past.” But she said all operators have emergency teams in place to make sure workers are evacuated safely and fires are prevented from spreading beyond the facility.
And those soupy, bird-killing tailings ponds? “They’re not flammable,” Klassen says.
It may well be the only thing about an oil sands operation that isn’t.
Repost from Bloomberg [Editor: Note 3 mentions of crude by rail, and in the final paragraph a reference to local opposition to CBR in Santa Maria, Pittsburg and Benicia. – RS]
California Isn’t Feeling U.S. Oil Boom as OPEC Dependence Grows
By Robert Tuttle, May 4, 2016 9:01 PM PDT
• State sourced a record 52% of its crude from overseas in 2015
• Falling in-state and Alaska production is driving imports
The shale oil boom that cut U.S. crude imports by 32 percent in a decade isn’t being felt out west as California grows increasingly dependent on Middle East supplies.
California brought in a record 52 percent of its crude from abroad last year, up from just 9 percent 20 years earlier, according to California Energy Commission data. The state hasn’t yet released the specific countries that supplied that oil in 2015, but in 2014, about 58 percent came from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the most recent data show.
Foreign dependence is only expected to grow as supplies from within the state and Alaska diminish and efforts to bring U.S. crude from the Midwest by rail face local opposition.
“Regulatory impediments have kept California isolated from the growing sources of domestic crude production,” John Auers, executive vice president at Turner Mason & Co., said by phone from Dallas. “California refiners won’t be able to take advantage”’ of lower-priced domestic crude.
Growing imports mean that California refiners have some of the highest crude costs in the U.S., which are passed onto consumers in the form of higher gasoline prices, David Hackett, president of Irving, California-based Stillwater Associates, said in a phone interview.
Imported crude is priced off Brent, which was selling at less than a $1 premium to U.S. West Texas Intermediate Wednesday. While the lifting of restrictions on U.S. oil exports has narrowed the gap from as high as $15 a barrel in 2014, the spread between the grades could widen again when oil rises and U.S. shale oil production picks up, Hackett said.
Drivers in Los Angeles paid the highest pump prices in the U.S. for much of last year, exceeding $4 a gallon last summer, according to AAA.
Domestic Supply
Alaska supplied the state with 73,000 barrels a day of crude in 2015, about 12 percent of California’s total supply, state data show. That’s down from as high as 46 percent in the early 1990s and may fall further as Alaska’s production is forecast to drop to 319,100 barrels a day in 2023, down from almost 500,000 barrels a day this year, official datashow.
California itself produced about 225,000 barrels a day in 2015, supplying about 36 percent of its own needs, according to state data. That’s a drop from 240,000 barrels a day in 2014. The decline in the state’s own production came as producers cut output amid falling oil prices and following the shutdown of the Plains All American pipeline near Santa Barbara after a spill curtailed about 38,000 barrels a day of offshore production, Stillwater’s Hackett said.
California could benefit from cheaper Midwestern oil if crude by rail terminals were built. New terminals planned for Santa Maria, Pittsburg and Benicia have been stymied by local opposition and regulatory holdups, Hackett said. In February, for example, Valero Energy Corp’s planned crude-by-rail project was rejected by a city commission.
Repost from the Times Herald-Record, Middletown NY [Editor: Another seemingly minor derailment, involving cars carrying “non-hazardous” products: liquified salt and a plastic compound. No spills, no injuries, no evacuations. The point? Derailments DO happen frequently, and it could have been much worse. – RS]
2 train tanker cars derail in Montgomery
By James Walsh, Times Herald-Record, May 2, 2016 at 11:48 PM
A derailment Monday sent two railroad tanker cars falling into a wooded area off Route 17K in Montgomery. JAMES WALSH/TIMES HERALD-RECORD
VILLAGE OF MONTGOMERY – Two railroad tanker cars at the rear of a freight train derailed on a sharp bend of the tracks Monday afternoon, but the public was never in danger.
Village Police Chief Steven Walsh said the tankers carried non-hazardous cargo. The cause of the wreck was undetermined.
Officials say there was no danger to the public after the train cars derailed. JAMES WALSH/TIMES HERALD-RECORD
“No leaks, no spills, no danger to the public,” Walsh said near the wreck off Route 17K near the village’s downtown.
The train, operated by the Middletown & New Jersey Railroad, was pulling 11 cars including the two that derailed, when the accident occurred at about 3:15 p.m.
Four other tankers were among the cars that remained on the tracks. The tracks are owned by Norfolk Southern Railway.
“It shook the building,” said Rick Wolden, proprietor of Allard Corners Garage. “It was loud. We thought it hit a car.”
Tanker cars carrying crude oil on mainlines, not on local lines like the one passing through the village, have raised concerns from environmental groups and others worried about explosions that have killed dozens of people, led to community evacuations and polluted waterways elsewhere.
The state has conducted track and tanker car inspections for more than a year with federal authorities in an attempt to ward off a hazardous derailment in populated areas including Kingston, Newburgh and Cornwall.
Walsh, the police chief, said one tanker in Monday’s wreck contained liquefied salt of the kind spread on highways before winter storms. That was destined for Nesco in the Town of Montgomery. The other contained a plastic compound bound for Hunter Panels, also in the town. Both tanker cars held about 20,000 gallons.
“The trains go very, very slow through here,” said Dorothy White, whose home overlooks the wreck site from about 30 feet away. The track speed limit is 8 mph through the village, Walsh said.
Village police and volunteers from the Wallkill Engine & Hose Co. of the Montgomery Fire Department were the first emergency responders to arrive. They were joined by the Orange County Hazmat Team, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and the state office of Fire Prevention and Control.
“The first thing we’re thinking about is public safety,” Walsh said. “A fire department assessment determined there was no hazardous cargo and no threat…It could have been worse, and we’re grateful it wasn’t.”
I have a great deal of respect and gratitude toward municipal politicians, particularly those who toil on the city council and commission level. The hours are long, the decisions tough, and the pay bad to non-existent. Heaven knows that without good folks looking after the stuff that keeps a social contract intact, Thomas Hobbes’s “natural state” of chaos, violence, and potholes would be the norm.
This goes for the folks who lead our fair city. Benicia’s mayor and members of the council seem like fine people. They attend the meetings, do the horrific amount of homework required to be conversant with the issues, and overall appear to be decent folks with a sincere believe that they are doing the collective good by serving their fellow citizens. I’m grateful for their service; but I just wish that three of them—Alan Schwartzman, Christina Strawbridge and Mark Hughes—would resign.
Their collective efforts to secure Valero’s delay of the crude-by-rail decision against overwhelming community disapproval, the unanimous rejection of the project by the Planning Commission, the concerns of every major city along the proposed rail path, and the thousands of letters and statements against the project by informed and credible experts raises the bar of small town political shamefulness.
That it was clear from the start that the three council members were going to side with Valero verges on chicanery. Why put the town’s citizens through the hope of believing that their concerns of health and wellbeing are being heard and matter, if you support a volatile project that has a blast zone that includes an elementary school?
Since none of the three has stepped forward with a clear and convincing argument about why they sided with Valero—after all Valero would still bring the oil in by existing means and really doesn’t need the continuous line of daily rail tankers to stay in business and pay its taxes—we are left with the impression that once again, a small American town is at the mercy of a major oil company.
The history of the US oil industry is a trail of tears going back to the early days of ruthless land grabs, the mendacity and murder of Standard Oil’s oligarchy, the tragic violence of the Middle East, and the rise of climate change and environmental pollution. And to think, all this could, and still can, be avoided by shifting from carbon-based to renewable energy.
(As an aside, look at Denton Texas. This small Texas oil town, home to many of Dallas’s oil executives, banned fracking and drilling in the city limits. Evidently, they didn’t want to run the risk of an accident close to parks and schools. There’s a lesson here for Benicia. As a state, New York stood tall against the oil industry, but Denton is the only US small town I know of to have the self-respect required to say enough.)
So, the question before the citizens of Benicia is now what? What good is Benicia’s formal planning process if corporate power can bludgeon a thorough and lengthy review and rejection of the crude-by-rail proposal? Why put the residents through all the work and hope of participating in the democratic process if there is no intention by the council to understand their concerns or follow their wishes?
I grew up in rural America and know what a “company town” is. In some ways, it was simple and easy, letting the company bosses tell you where to work, what and who to like, what to believe in and who to vote for.
But it lacked fulfillment and self-determination, and I moved to the Bay Area to be part of the epicenter of the world’s intellectual and scientific renaissance where freedom of thought, action, and the ideals of local democracy are so highly acclaimed. Yet, ironically, I end up in a “company town”, where a huge carbon polluter can seemly send three decent council members scurrying to service its greed.
The problems of 21st century cities, big and small, are complex and can no longer be inclusive of one economic driver or administered by one major corporate power. For Benicia to move forward and join the extraordinary Bay Area knowledge-based economy we need to say goodbye to those three council members who lack the wherewithal to help the city past its company-town era.
Other once-rural Bay Area cities have thrown of the oppressive yoke of being run by a single company, exchanging “easy” for self-determination. Cities like Sunnyvale and Mountain View long ago threw off the yoke of the defense industry and learned to reinvent themselves and flourish. Walnut Creek, Livermore, and now Richmond are joining the prosperity of a sophisticated diverse economy. Vallejo and the other cities along I-80 are showing signs of change as the robust modern Bay Area economy moves outward from Silicon Valley.
If Benicia hopes to continue as a fully functioning city with a compliment of services and a healthy and vigorous citizenry, it has to look forward, shed its dependence on Valero, and embrace a 21st century reality.
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