All posts by Roger Straw

Editor, owner, publisher of The Benicia Independent
Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Kinder Morgan, Richmond CA

Richmond residents, leaders warn of danger from Bakken crude by rail shipments

Repost from The Richmond Confidential

Richmond residents, leaders warn of danger from Bakken crude by rail shipments

By Phil James, November 1, 2014
Kinder Morgan's Richmond depot takes in dozens of DOT-111 train cars laden with Bakken crude oil from North Dakota every week. (Phil James/Richmond Confidential)
Kinder Morgan’s Richmond depot takes in dozens of DOT-111 train cars laden with Bakken crude oil from North Dakota every week. (Phil James/Richmond Confidential)

If you go to the website explosive-crude-by-rail.org and zoom in on Richmond, what you’ll find is disconcerting. According to the 1-3 mile buffer zone on the map, the entire city and its 107,000 residents are in danger if trains carrying crude oil explode.

Such is the concern of several Bay Area environmental groups in Richmond who have drawn the City Council into an escalating dispute with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and Kinder Morgan, which operates a local crude by rail transfer station.

“The health and safety of the community is at stake here,” Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said during a City Council meeting. “We are encouraging the air district to review the process.”

Richmond City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution to “review” and “if feasible, revoke” the permit given to Kinder Morgan – the 5th largest energy company in the United States — to take in crude oil by rail. Based in Texas, the company was founded in 1997 by two former Enron executives.

The crude, from the Bakken Shale of North Dakota, ignites and explodes more easily than more traditional crudes. On the heels of a major oil boom, transportation of crude by rail in the North America increased by 423 percent between 2011 and 2012, and more crude shipped by rail was spilled in 2013 than in the four previous decades combined.

In 2012, a train carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people and decimating the small Canadian town. This, among other incidents, has prompted the U.S. Department of Transportation to label Bakken transport by rail as an “imminent hazard”.

Several community groups have rallied to ban the movement of crude shipments through Richmond. Megan Zapanta of The Asian Pacific Environmental Network said she’s worried that a lack of attention could have dire consequences.

“Bakken crude has not been well-documented here,” she said. “If there’s some disaster, how will we get the word out to our immigrant community?”

Evan Reis, a structural engineer for Hinman Consulting Engineers, released a report earlier this year assessing the probability of a crude-laden train derailing in the East Bay.

He estimates there is a six in 10 chance of derailment on the line running from San Jose through Richmond to Martinez within the next 30 years.

“Given the fact that these are highly urbanized places we are going through,” he said by phone, “A 60 percent probability would be of concern to me.”

McLaughlin pledged to support Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) as they consider appealing the air district decision to grant Kinder Morgan a permit to funnel crude through Richmond by rail cars. The city does not have the jurisdiction to revoke any licenses or permits from the company. The permit must go through the air district, where it can be reviewed with respect to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)

In March, CBE filed a lawsuit against BAAQMD for failing to publicly disclose the permit to the residents of Richmond. The group only noticed the arrival of crude by rail because a local television station, KPIX, discovered that Kinder Morgan was bringing Bakken crude to its Richmond depot.

The Tesoro refinery in Martinez receives the Bakken shipments by truck after they are transferred from the rail depot in Richmond. Richmond’s Chevron refinery does not take in any of the Bakken crude.

In September, the lawsuit was dismissed on technical grounds because the complaint by the CBE was not filed within 180 days of the permit’s issuance.

The permit, which was filed by BAAQMD staff in 2013, drew ire from environmental groups because it was not subject to an environmental impact report, and was granted without review from the district’s board.

Andres Soto, a representative of Communities for a Better Environment in Richmond, appealed to Richmond leaders to counter the decision.

“Kinder Morgan issued an illegal permit to bring Bakken crude into Richmond without public notice or review,” Soto said.

Ralph Borrmann, public information officer for the BAAQMD, declined to comment until the end of the appeal period. The CBE has considered a challenge of the ruling.

The Kinder Morgan depot has been taking in ethanol by rail since 2010, but they have since diversified their intake to include Bakken crude. Kinder Morgan officials, though, say the concerns are overstated.

“We didn’t feel that the profile of the crude oil arriving was materially different,” Melissa Ruiz, a spokesperson for the Texas-based company, wrote in an email.

Charlie Davidson, a member of the Sunflower Alliance speaking on behalf of CBE, disagrees.

“They’re basically running tin cans on 100 cars,” he told Richmond City Council. “The flash point [of Bakken Crude] is so volatile that it could burn in Antarctica.”

Randy Sawyer, Chief Environmental Health and Hazardous Materials Officer in Contra Costa County, acknowledged the dangers but also downplayed the risk of a major disaster.

“It’s a hazardous material and there’s concern of derailment and fire,” he said in an interview by phone. “But if you put it in relation to other materials, it isn’t as hazardous as chlorine or ammonia. It’s equivalent to ethanol or gasoline.”

“The biggest concern with crude by rail is not so much than the hazard being worse, it’s just the huge amount of quantity that’s being shipped by rail,” Sawyer said.

Since the dismissal of the lawsuit, other municipalities in the North Bay have rallied against crude by rail. In Sacramento, a lawsuit by Earth Justice prompted the local air board to revoke a permit from Inter-State Oil Company on the grounds that they did not disclose the potential public health and safety concerns to local residents.

Suma Peesapati, a member of Earth Justice, drew similarities between Sacramento and Richmond.

“Kinder Morgan’s project in Richmond is virtually identical to the air district issued permits for unloading crude in Sacramento,” she said. “The [Bay Area] Air District made it clear they issued a permit in error, rather than engage in this formal process.”

Despite the resolution passing, Richmond Councilmember Jael Myrick expressed just as much weariness as concern for the issue.

“The frustration that we had the last time we talked about this is it just seems there is so little we can do to combat it.”

Fossil fuel divestment

Exxon: Destroying Planet Necessary to Relieve Global Poverty

Repost from EcoWatch

Exxon: Destroying Planet Necessary to Relieve Global Poverty

Michael Brune | October 21, 2014
exxonmobil600
An ExxonMobil chemical plant along Cancer Alley in Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Louisiana.

The fossil-fuel divestment movement has been on a roll lately to the tune of $50 billion, but one of its biggest successes happened last month: The world’s most profitable oil company squirmed. ExxonMobil’s vice president of public and government affairs published a critique of divestment that concluded by saying that destroying our planet’s climate by recklessly extracting and burning fossil fuel reserves is necessary to relieve global poverty.

This sudden concern is interesting from a company that holds the record for the highest corporate profits ever posted in the U.S. and whose CEO made more than $100,000 a day in 2012 (including Sundays). ExxonMobil hasn’t earned those kinds of profits by worrying overmuch about the poor of the world. As the Sierra Student Coalition‘s Anastasia Schemkes put it: “This is the oil industry saying ‘please don’t be mean to me’ after bullying vulnerable communities around the globe for decades.”

The real message of ExxonMobil’s blog post was unintentional. The fossil fuel divestment movement, which started on college campuses but has since spread to foundation boardrooms and beyond, is achieving its principal goal, which is to raise awareness of how morally indefensible the actions of companies like ExxonMobil really are. I’m not just talking about its core business of extracting as much oil as it can, wherever it can, while it can. This is a company that pretends to care about climate disruption (with lots of talk about “mitigation,” which is code for “do whatever it takes to keep burning fossil fuels”), while simultaneously funding the climate-denial industry and lavishing its largesse on obstructionist legislators.

How can we begin to get companies like this to change? It’s tough to beat such a Goliath through financial pressure alone. Even the most wildly successful divestment campaign is unlikely to dent this mega-corporation’s profits in the near term. But let’s not forget that even the hugest corporation is made up of real people. And real people start to get uncomfortable when it’s clear that not only is what they are doing terribly wrong—but that other people are taking note.

That’s when they start to get defensive—and we can see that divestment really is making a difference.

Fossil fuel divestment

Exxon Blasts Movement to Divest From Fossil Fuels

Repost from The National Journal

Exxon Blasts Movement to Divest From Fossil Fuels

The oil giant seeks to counter the campaign that urges investors to dump stock in petroleum and coal companies.
By Ben Geman, October 13, 2014

Exxon Mobil is wielding its public relations might against the fossil-fuel divestment movement, signaling that climate-change activists have struck a nerve at the world’s biggest publicly traded oil and gas company.

Exxon Mobil’s blog, titled “Perspectives,” posted a lengthy attack Friday about the divestment movement, which urges universities, churches, pension funds, and other big institutional investors to dump their shares of oil and coal companies as part of the fight against global warming.

But the blog post calls the movement “out of step with reality,” saying it’s at odds with the need for poor nations to gain better access to energy, as well as the need for fossil fuels to meet global energy demand for decades to come.

So far, the climate advocates’ progress at getting a growing number of institutions to shed holdings in fossil fuel companies remains pretty small compared with the scale of the industry they’re battling.

Consider that the roughly 1,700 oil-and-gas and coal companies listed on stock exchanges are worth nearly $5 trillion, notes the research company Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

But the divestment movement has been growing– just last week the University of Glasgow became the first European university to announce divestment plans. And the movement also has a number of high-profile adherents, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel Prize-winning anti-apartheid leader. (The fossil fuel divestment movement takes its cues from the 1970s and 1980s movement urging divestment from apartheid South Africa.)

Another supporter is Christiana Figueres, the United Nations official shepherding international negotiations aimed at reaching a new global climate pact in late 2015.

But Exxon calls divestment a misplaced solution to climate change.

“Divestment represents a diversion from the real search for technological solutions to managing climate risks that energy companies like ours are pursuing,” writes Ken Cohen, Exxon’s VP for public and government affairs.

Cohen’s post argues that the movement ignores the scale of global energy demand for power, transportation, and other needs, as well as “the inability of current renewable technologies to meet it.”

“Almost every place on the planet where there is grinding poverty, there is also energy poverty. Wherever there is subsistence living, it is usually because there is little or no access to modern, reliable forms of energy,” Cohen writes.

Divestment advocates will find plenty of material to argue about in Exxon’s post. In one case, Exxon cites estimates that renewable energy’s share of the total global mix will be about 15 percent in 2040.

But the activists pushing for divestment, such as Bill McKibben’s 350.org, advocate for more aggressive policies that promote low-carbon energy, and analysts say that would change the global mix a lot more and a lot faster.

While the International Energy Agency has forecast that without policy changes, renewables will meet about 15 percent of total energy needs in 2035, IEA and other agencies have also modeled various other scenarios in which low-carbon energy takes a far larger share.

For instance, in late September, IEA released a “roadmap” of policies explaining how solar power alone could become the world’s biggest source of electricity by 2050 or even earlier.

Divestment advocates have already criticized Exxon’s post.

“This is the oil industry saying ‘please don’t be mean to me’ after bullying vulnerable communities around the globe for decades,” said Anastasia Schemkes, a campaign representative with the Sierra Student Coalition.

Reverend Fletcher Harper, executive director of the pro-divestment group GreenFaith, took issue with Exxon’s assertions that the divestment movement is out of touch. “Divestment advocates have been clear from the start that the divestment campaign is about calling into question the industry’s ‘social license’ to operate. In this regard, divestment is a highly appropriate debate, and highly reality-based,” he said in an email.

Harper also said that advocates agree with the imperative of bringing energy to nations where access is now lacking. “I believe that these energy needs must be met, to the greatest degree possible, with clean, renewable energy. The [Exxon] blog post does not reckon with the fact that coal, oil, and gas combustion are responsible for a large number of deaths annually worldwide,” Harper said.

It’s not the first time Exxon has tussled with divestment advocates.

In response to shareholder activists, Exxon released a report in late March that rebuts advocates’ claims that its fossil fuel reserves are at risk of becoming “stranded assets” in a carbon-constrained world.

 

 

Bakken Crude, Rail routing, Schools

Potentially explosive trains rolling past 55 schools along a 60 mile stretch in NY and NJ

Repost from WABC TV7 Eyewitness News, New York, NY
[Editor: Trains actually pass right UNDER one school.  A shocking video and excellent investigative reporting.  Someone really should research and list the schools (and other vital structures) along the Union Pacific tracks proposed as the route for Valero Benicia crude-by-rail.
UPDATE, Nov. 1, 2014 – Note previous NRDC study on this issue in California, especially p. 3 of It Could Happen Here, The Exploding Threat of Crude by Rail in California, which lists the number of schools.  More detailed mapping is available on the NRDC’s Risk Zone Maps.  – RS] 

The Investigators: Potentially explosive trains rolling through New York, New Jersey neighborhoods

By Jim Hoffer, October 31, 2014

NEW YORK (WABC) — They are mile-long trains filled with explosive crude oil that the government says are unsafe, yet more and more of them are rolling through neighborhoods in New York and New Jersey.

In an exclusive investigation in which the Eyewitness News Investigators tracked the movements of these trains, we’ve determined that several times a day, they pass right by dozens of schools filled with students.

In some towns, they are called bomb trains: tanker cars filled with millions of gallons of crude oil.

“If you live in community near rail lines, I guarantee you, you know about bomb trains,” said Paul Gallay, president of the environmental group RiverKeeper.

Ten months ago in North Dakota, a fireball from a crude oil train derailment forced the town of 1,400 to evacuate. Then, last April, there were more evacuations in Lynchburg, Virginia, after a CSX oil train derailed there.

Last year, a derailment in a small Canadian town killed 47 people, the devastation made worse because the old rail cars are prone to rupture in a crash.

Just months ago, the federal government told rail shippers they have two years to phase out these older tankers. RiverKeeper thinks the ban should be immediate.

“You have to have better rail cars, and soon,” Gallay said. “And until you do, you shouldn’t be putting communities at risk.”

In the last two years, there’s been a 400 percent increase in crude oil trains rolling down along the Hudson River and into New Jersey. Our investigation has found that along a 60-mile stretch of the rail line from Newburgh to Newark, there are at least 55 schools located within 1,500 feet of the tracks.

Schools_Bomb-Trains_NY-NJ_WABC-New-York_550Every day, three to four trains filled with millions of gallons of crude from the mid-west roll by these schools.

“It’s totally unacceptable,” mom Sarah McTasney said.

McTasney, of West Nyack, worries that for at least the next two years, these tanker cars that the government says are defective will continue rolling by near her daughter’s school.

“It’s putting our communities at risk,” she said. “And when talking about schools, you’re talking about high concentrations of children.”

A spokesman for CSX Railroad says they’ve put in place numerous safety measures, including increased track inspections, lowering the speeds of some of their trains and installing monitors to detect track defects. The spokesman adds that CSX does not own the railcars but are responsible for moving them safely. And as for safety, our investigation found one school along the CSX rail line that stood out more than the rest.

At West Point Military Academy, long lines of tanker cars filled with highly flammable crude go right under the campus through a tunnel below one of the academy’s main buildings.

“We have evidence from al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups specifically looking at rail targets,” rail security expert Fred Millar said.

CSX says it has worked closely with first-responders in both New York and New Jersey and has advocated for higher design standards for cars.

Here is the list of all the schools located within 1,500 feet of CSX rail line from Newburgh to Newark.

NEW JERSEY
Hawkins Street Elementary- Newark, NJ – 1300 ft
Ethical Community Charter School- Jersey City- 600 ft
Elementary School 2 – Jersey City – 1500 ft
St. Anne’s School – Jersey City – 1500 ft
North Bergen Vocational School – North Bergen, NJ – 500 ft
McKinley School – North Bergen, NJ – 800 ft
St. Brigid’s School – North Bergen, NJ – 1100 ft
Franklin Elementary School – North Bergen, NJ -1100 ft
Robert Fulton School – North Bergen, NJ – 1100 ft
Franklin Elementary School #3 – North Bergen, NJ – 1500 ft
High Tech High School – North Bergen, NJ – 1000 ft
Grant Elementary – Ridgefield Park,NJ – 1400 ft
Han Al High School – Ridgefield Park, NJ – 1400 ft
Lincoln Elementary – Ridgefield Park, NJ – 1300 ft
E Roy Rixby Elementary – Bogota, NJ – 1400 ft
Trinity Lutheran School – Bogota, NJ – 1000 ft
St. Joseph School – Bogota, NJ – 1300 ft
Bogart Memorial School – Bogota, NJ – 400 ft
Bogota Jr. Sr. High – Bogota, NJ – 1200 ft
Teaneck Community Charter School – Teaneck, NJ – 130 ft
Teaneck High School – Teaneck, NJ – 1200 ft
Benjamin Franklin M.S. – Teaneck, NJ – 1200 ft
Yeshiva Gedolah – Teaneck, NJ – 100 ft
Torah Academy – Teaneck, NJ – 250 ft
Ma’ayanot Yeshiva H.S. – Teaneck, NJ – 150 ft
Roy W. Brown M.S. – Bergenfield, NJ – 300 ft
Yeshivat He’Atid – Bergenfield, NJ – 600 ft
Franklin Elementary School – Bergenfield, NJ – 1300 ft
Transfiguration Academy – Bergenfield, NJ – 800 ft
Dumont High School – Dumont, NJ – 500 ft
Newbury Academy – Dumont, NJ – 900 ft
Bergen Center for Child Development – Haworth, NJ – 900 ft
Haworth Public School – Haworth, NJ – 900 ft
Harrington Park Public School – Harrington Park, NJ- 1400 ft
The Goddard School – Norwood, NJ – 100 ft
Thomas Jefferson Elementary – Northvale, NJ – 300 ft

NEW YORK
Dominican College – Orangeburg, NY – 200 ft
Tappan high School – Orangeburg, NY – 1100 ft
St. Dominic’s School – Blauvelt, NY – 1100 ft
St. Catherine’s School – Orangeburg, NY – 1000 ft
Cottage Lane Elementary – Blauvelt, NY – 1300 ft
St. Paul’s School – Valley Cottage, NY – 200 ft
Congers Elementary School – Congers, NY – 200 ft
Haverstraw M.S. – Haverstraw, NY – 1300 ft
Gerald F. Neary Elementary – Haverstraw, NY – 1000 ft
North Rockland Control School District – West Haverstraw, NY – 1300 ft
West Haverstraw Elementary – West Haverstraw, NY – 800 ft
West Point Military Academy – Highland Falls, NY – 0 ft
Cornwall on Hudson Elementary – Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY – 1300 ft
Cornwall Central School District – Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY – 1200 ft
Liberty Street School – Newburgh, NY – 1200 ft
St. Patrick’s – Newburgh, NY – 900 ft
Grand Street Public School – Newburgh, NY – 1000 ft
Newburgh Jabemacle Elementary School – Newburgh, NY – 1200 ft
Mount St. Mary College – Newburgh, NY – 1500 ft.