Email letter, by Marilyn Bardet, May 9, 2025

Today, May 9, I read in the Mercury News the article headlined, “Is Gavin Newsom changing his tune with the oil industry?”  It happens that yesterday I’d been discussing this possibility with Matthew Green (at KQED News). In his April 26th article, Matthew had conjured that Valero could be throwing a Hail Mary for regulatory relief, for at least indeterminate years’ survival of its Benicia refinery.

I’d followed up with his football  analogy imagining who Valero’s wide receiver would be. Based on what I’d been hearing about possible legislative changes to authority governing refineries and other heavy industrial polluters, it wasn’t difficult to think Valero and its lobbyists with the Western States Petroleum Associates would be targeting the Governor, whose political career hangs on the state’s economy.

Newsom would be defended by CARB (Cal-EPA’s California Air Resources Board). In such scenarios in play, Valero’s long shot could end up “incomplete” or be intercepted; or somebody at scrimmage gets “off sides” yardage penalty. Whatever’s the case, right now the state’s plays aren’t over and neither are Valero’s. The only certainty, the game being played is a nail-biter for Benicians. But wait a minute.

The fire that happened Monday ignited at a furnace, as stated in the Air District’s Notice of Violations released this week. That particular furnace happens to heat the oil feed  to 1000 degrees F, before it enters the distillation tower, the “FCCU”— the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit or “cat cracker” which is the primary processing unit distilling gasoline, kerosene (jet fuel), diesel and other products, which then go on to be further refined throughout the facility. Without the furnace and FCCU there is no oil refining. Was the FCCU tower damaged in the fire?

It was uncanny that the fire was occurring just as our mayor was being interviewed on KQED’s Forum, when he was discussing the vexing financial problem for the City of Valero’s announcement. Certainly, in that very moment, the fire was adding complexity to Valero’s decision-making which they’d left hanging, purportedly til next year, April 2026. But, given that “idling” is one of three proposed options announced to the CA Energy Comm (CEC), I assume that the refinery is at least temporarily forced into idling as a result of the fire.

Will Valero decide to make significant capital investment now to fix the furnace and, if damaged, the FCCU, in order to keep operating for another year? I sure don’t think the City should have to wait weeks and weeks for a “root cause analysis” investigation to be completed to hear Valero’s decision. If their decision is to restore operations and do a temporary fix, OR permanently idle the facility now, this decision has immediate ramifications for the City and community, and certainly for Valero employees, operators, contract workers.

Putting optimum idealizations aside, under current circumstances, we here in Benicia are hardly experiencing the beginnings a “just transition”  We’re going to endure an ABRUPT transition.

In the meantime, we have to stay vigilant and resolutely care about safety and health risks posed by a very vulnerable facility in its apparent final phases of operational existence.

We must look ahead: closure and cleanup, and the huge prices they exact, are near-term issues now that finally demand public attention.

Marilyn Bardet
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
BCAMP Board Member
BISHO Working Group
Valero Community Advisory Panel