Repost from National Public Radio, Morning Edition
[Editor: First 3 minutes, all about Keystone XL. Beginning around 3:15, all about crude by rail. – RS
By Jim Zarroli | May 23, 2014 | 4 min 14 sec
Repost from The Martinez News Gazette
[Editor: An excellent fact-filled summary on tar sands crude by our colleagues in the Martinez Environmental Group. Note that Valero Benicia Refinery has admitted (in its open community meeting on March 24, 2014) that it may include tar sands crude in its “mix.” See “NRDC report: Valero’s Magic Box.” Also: “KPIX reports: Valero admits Tar Sands Crude, Fracked Oil could come through Benicia.” – RS]
Because fossil fuels are a finite resource, petroleum companies are now resorting to more extreme forms of oil extraction, including tar sands, fracking, and Arctic exploration. The tar sands are deposits of heavy crude oil trapped in sand and clay that are extracted using enormous amounts of water, as well as open pit mining, heat and horizontal wells. The largest deposit of Canada’s tar sands is along the Athabasca River in Alberta (Source: http://albertacanada.com).
Why is everyone so worried about the tar sands? First, tar sands oil extraction and production emit three times more carbon dioxide than the extraction and production of conventional oil. Second, tar sands extraction requires total destruction of pristine areas within the Canadian Boreal forest, one of the few large, intact ecosystems on Earth (Source: Friends of the Earth). Finally, the extraction of tar sands will have devastating global impacts. In a 2012 editorial in the New York Times, Jim Hansen of NASA famously wrote that if the tar sands are fully excavated, it will be “game over for the climate,” because Canada’s tar sands contain twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as has been emitted over the entire span of human history (Source: NYT! 5/9/12).
What does this have to do with Martinez? Shell Refinery in Martinez is currently receiving and processing tar sands (Source: CC Times, 6/1/13). Contra Costa County’s air is already very polluted, and this type of refining will only make it worse. Shell’s choice to refine tar sands will worsen the health of Martinez residents; pollution emanating from tar sands refineries are directly linked to asthma, emphysema and birth defects. (Source: Sierra Club, Toxic Tar Sands: Profiles from the Front Lines).
Additionally, the U.S. Geological Survey found that tar sands bitumen contains “eleven times more sulfur and nickel, six times more nitrogen, and five times more lead than conventional oil.” (Source: Environmental Integrity Project, Tar Sands: Feeding U.S. Refinery Expansions with Dirty Fuel).
But wait, there’s more … Shell also has a global role in profiting from the destruction of the climate. Royal Dutch Shell owns a whopping 60 PERCENT of the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada (Source: www.shell.com). If you Google “Athabasca tar sands,” you will see a veritable “Mordor” on Earth.
If all this makes you feel completely overwhelmed, get connected locally and join the Martinez Environmental Group. Climate change issues are happening literally in our back yard and we CAN do something about it.
If you want to stay updated on these issues and learn how to get involved, please go to http://mrtenvgrp.com/category/meetings.
Repost from The Los Angeles Times, PolitiCal
[Editor: Note that Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community is among the more than 100 environmental and community groups signing on to this letter. – RS]
More than 100 environmental and community groups Thursday sent a letter to the California Legislature urging lawmakers to support a moratorium on the oil-production method of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in California.
Led by the national progressive group CREDO, the coalition is supporting SB 1132 by state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), which is pending in the Senate and would halt fracking to allow more studies to determine whether the method poses health hazards.
“This bill presents lawmakers with a clear-cut choice that will show whether they are on the side of oil industry lobbyists or Californians concerned about public health and safety,” said Zack Malitz, the campaign manager for CREDO. “It’s clear from the broad support across California that residents know a moratorium is the right path to protect our communities from the well-documented dangers of fracking.”
Groups that signed on to the letter include the Burbank Green Alliance, the California League of United Latin American Citizens, the California League of Conservation Voters, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment.
“Given these techniques’ long-term consequence and known harmful impacts elsewhere, it is entirely appropriate for California to impose a moratorium on fracking, acidizing and all well stimulation while the state reviews the current and future effects here,” the letter said.
Meanwhile, a new statewide poll found that 68% of Californians support a fracking moratorium until the practice can be studied more, and that a majority would be more likely to vote for a legislator who voted in favor of such a measure.
“This poll shows that most Californians have heard about fracking, and they don’t want it to create the same problems here that it has caused in other states,” said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California. The group commissioned the poll from the firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates.
Repost from The Contra Costa Times
[This editorial also appeared on May 24, 2014 in the print edition of the Vallejo Times Herald.]
Discussions about reducing California’s greenhouse gas emissions often become both heated and hyperbolic. But a plan being advanced by one of the East Bay leading refineries should be neither.
The management of Shell Oil’s Martinez refinery has decided that it can operate effectively at current levels without using heavy crude oil as a base in some of its operations. Heavy crude requires much more energy, water and heat to process than the lighter crude.
We were thrilled to learn that Shell has filed paperwork with the county regarding its intent to shut down its coker operation, one of its dirtiest processes. Shell plans to replace it with processes that handle lighter crude, but not the more volatile bakken crude.
That is, indeed, good news for Shell’s neighbors in Martinez, but it is even better news for the environment.
Shell General manager Paul Gabbard told our editorial board that the process change will cut the refinery’s greenhouse gas emissions by 700,000 metric tons a year, which he said is equivalent to taking 100,000 cars off the roads.
It is not insignificant, especially during a drought, that this process change also will cut Shell’s water use by an estimated 15 percent. That works out to a savings of about 1,000 gallons of water per minute.
There also will be about 300 temporary construction jobs for local workers as the conversion is made.
But the biggest news is that Shell officials think this change, which they hope to have completed by 2018, will allow the refinery to meet the state’s stringent standards for greenhouse gas reduction before the 2020 deadline.
In 2006 the Legislature passed AB32, California’s landmark effort to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Most oil refiners in the state were not happy about the law.
After all, the legislation was designed to dramatically reduce the levels of six different emissions that are quite often associated with the manufacture of petroleum products.
Not only did it seek to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons emitted, it sought to do so by a whopping 25 percent statewide by 2020.
Many companies moaned that its target emissions were impossible to meet. The bill implicitly acknowledged that the goals were ambitious because it instructed the California Air Resources Board to develop regulations and “market mechanisms” that could allow for industrial operations that couldn’t meet the standards to purchase pollution credits through an auction from operations that had excess credits.
But if Shell’s reckoning is correct, and we think it is, it won’t need to do that — and this action could blaze a dramatic new trail that others in the industry should consider following.
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