The hypocrisy of our our “friendly” giants: Big Oil in our back yards

Repost from The Martinez Gazette
[Editor: The following letter to the editor of The Martinez Gazette comes from our sister city across the Carquinez Strait, but it describes life in every refinery town.  Like Shell Oil, Valero in Benicia does an excellent job of contributing to popular charitable causes here and promotes itself as highly concerned with public health and safety  all the while filling our California skies with pollutants and seeking permission to bring in toxic and dangerous tar-sands and Bakken crudes that lay waste to the earth and its inhabitants from the strip mines and fracking fields all the way to our back door.  – RS]

‘Shell Oil is the hypocrisy at Earth Day’

 May 4, 2014

Dear editor:

Martinez celebrated John Muir’s Birthday and Earth Day last weekend at the John Muir Historical Site. Attendees were offered environmental information from sustainable and recyclable, to energy and water saving to causes of greenhouse gas (GHG) and global warming with the usual sponsors of the IBEW, Republic Services, City of Martinez, and Shell Oil of Martinez.

How does a fossil fuel industry corporation that produces 175 tons of hydrocarbons a day at it’s Martinez Refinery, owns 60 percent of Canadian Boreal Forest that is decimating the ecology to strip mine highly toxic tar sands crude oil to be shipped to its refineries, and has less than 2.5 percent of its overall expenditures in sustainable and renewable energy while totally divesting itself of solar energy and decreasing wind energy interests, get a place at John Muir’s Birthday/ Earth Day event? Certainly, John Muir would have left them off the list.

Shell and Big Oil was the elephant at the party. The Earth Day hypocrisy is that refineries in the Bay Area are the single largest stationary source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Shell is responsible for 492 million pounds of VOCs per year. Contra Costa County is the third most toxic county in the state of California. Short term exposure to sulfur dioxide, a refining byproduct, can result in respiratory illness and cardiovascular issues as well as aggravation of asthma. Do you or someone you know have asthma or respiratory illnesses?

There is no spare the air day for Shell or any refinery. When you can’t put a log on the fire, Shell emits over 700,000 tons of hydrocarbons per year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Shell as well as the four other refineries in the Bay Area, are now refining a dirtier crude oil high in sulfur and other metals which emits more hydrocarbons. The tar sand oil from Alberta Canada is heavy like tar and sinks when it hits water, making oil spill recovery impossible. Shell receives this type of crude by ship and a spill of this type while off loading would foul our drinking water in Martinez.

Bakken crude oil, extracted from the Dakotas, is very explosive because of its low flash point and can explode before it is refined. This type of crude is being shipped by rail car through our downtown to the Bay Area refineries and has been in the news recently with train derailments and explosions in Casselton, North Dakota, Louisiana, Lac Megantic Canada and most recently in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The fossil fuel industry is always trying to improve their image within their communities despite their records as gross polluters. Chevron takes a single page ad in the Times every week telling us what a partner they are in the community since sending 15,000 residents to neighboring hospitals after a 2012 fire at their Richmond Refinery. Shell distributed flyers at Earth Day proposing to modernize their Martinez facility by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 700,000 metric tons a year and reducing water usage by 15 percent. Why did it take them until the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the fossil fuel industry is the leading contributor of GHG  emissions and a drought in California to get them to start reducing the amount of toxins they emit and the amount of water they use?

If the fossil fuel industry was truly committed to solving the energy issue as it relates to climate change and becoming a leader of green technology, they would not have eliminated wind and solar energy from their repertoire. The easy to extract oil has now been processed and these companies insist on extracting every drop of oil by drilling, hydro fracking, or strip mining to the point where the cost to extract crude oil is equal to the cost to burn it in an efficient engine.

The hypocrisy lies in the fact that Shell Oil made almost $20 billion dollars last year and was awarded the Martinez Business of the Year Award all the while convincing the planners, leaders, and deciders that they are entitled to a seat at the Birthday Party because they put change in the pockets of the community.

Our children and grandchildren are the apples of our eyes and the soft spot in our hearts. Shell Oil knows this and they focus their donations to Martinez Education Foundation, Martinez Unified School District, school scholarships, back packs so our kids can shelter in place, etc… for the children. THIS is the hypocrisy. They contaminate the ground, spew toxics that foul our air, our children’s air: because the money in the community’s pockets makes this poisoning acceptable.

Shell Oil is the Earth Day Hypocrisy.

– James Neu, Martinez

State hiring beginners for critical refinery-inspector jobs

Repost from SFGate

State hiring beginners for critical refinery-inspector jobs

State hiring new graduates for tough jobs that protect workers, public
Jaxon Van Derbeken  |  May 4, 2014

State regulators who were handed millions of dollars from the oil industry to improve refinery safety after the disastrous 2012 fire at Chevron’s Richmond plant are hiring inspectors out of college with little or no experience in the field, The Chronicle has learned.

The Legislature assessed new fees on oil refineries and dedicated the money for increased oversight in response to scathing federal criticism of the state’s refinery oversight leading up to the fire, which sent 15,000 people to hospitals complaining of respiratory and other problems. Federal investigators found that California conducted too few comprehensive inspections of refineries and that its lax monitoring allowed Chevron to ignore corroded pipes, one of which sprang a leak and started the fire.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which led the Chevron investigation, has also questioned the state’s inspection efforts in the wake of an acid spill in February at the Tesoro Corp. refinery near Martinez that sent two workers to the hospital with chemical burns.

In its reports after the Chevron fire, the board called for the state to hire more “experienced, competent” refinery inspectors. At the time of the Richmond fire, the state had seven inspectors, several of whom had years of experience working at refineries but did not have sufficient engineering backgrounds to stand up to industry pressure, federal investigators said.

After Cal/OSHA, the agency responsible for inspections, acknowledged that seven inspectors weren’t enough, the Legislature approved $5.4 million in annual fees on oil refineries and said the money should be spent on at least 15 inspectors.

19-member team

The Department of Industrial Relations – which oversees Cal/OSHA – hired six new inspectors and transferred employees from elsewhere in the agency to create a 19-member team that will inspect oil refineries and other hazardous-materials plants. However, none of the new hires has any refinery safety experience, state officials say.

Most have bachelor’s degrees in engineering and some have master’s, said Mike Wilson, chief scientist for Cal/OSHA, but none has ever worked in a refinery or done an inspection at one.

“We have some young new people – I am confident they will all be up to speed to where we intend to take this program,” said Christine Baker, head of the Department of Industrial Relations. “They are all very qualified people, or they would not even be considered to meet the civil service standards of this position.”

They will join existing refinery inspectors and six transfers from elsewhere in Cal/OSHA in the new unit, Wilson said. The transferred inspectors have not worked at refineries either.

Sponsor’s concerns

State Sen. Loni Hancock, author of the bill that raised the money for new inspectors, said she has pressed state officials to explain their hiring strategy, and so far is not satisfied.

“I am trying to get enough highly qualified inspectors on board so we don’t have a Tesoro a year after we have a Chevron,” said Hancock, D-Berkeley. She said she has asked Cal/OSHA why it is hiring recent engineering graduates instead of industry veterans, but “we have not gotten those answers yet.”

Wilson said the hires and transfers will undergo training over several months before starting inspections. Cal/OSHA expects its beefed-up unit to conduct comprehensive inspections at four refineries per year, each lasting roughly five months – compared with the 50 to 70 hours of staff time typical of inspections before the Chevron fire.

An official with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board questioned whether Cal/OSHA was taking the right approach in its hiring.

“They need more experienced people,” said Don Holmstrom, head of the federal agency’s Western region investigations office. “Not all of the people need to be experienced people, but you could have half of them with 10 or more years in a refinery or a chemical plant.”

Only about one-fourth of the 19 inspectors in the beefed-up inspection unit will have that much experience, according to numbers provided by the Department of Industrial Relations. All of those were with Cal/OSHA at the time of the Chevron fire.

“It doesn’t sound necessarily like they are hiring the same kind of people we would hire,” Holmstrom said.

Hancock said lawmakers wanted “enough highly qualified inspectors to go into these very dangerous and complex places – people who are skilled engineers in this area – and make sure safety regulations are being met.”

Ready for challenges

Only inspectors with experience and knowledge will be equipped to take on companies like Chevron with “armies of lawyers who are qualified and highly trained, and they challenge every fine, every finding, no matter how small, and string it out,” Hancock said.

Holmstrom echoed Hancock’s concerns, adding that even the holdover veterans at Cal/OSHA aren’t “chemical engineers with refinery experience.”

They may have experience operating refineries, he said, “but don’t have technical experience needed to challenge the companies. Without it, that’s not going to happen.”

Baker said the holdovers have “over 60 years of combined hands-on experience in refinery work, which has contributed enormously to the effectiveness of our oversight.”

She added that although “staffing is critical” to improving refinery safety, increased staffing alone is “insufficient to improve refinery safety at the pace and scale that I believe is needed.”

“Like most public health and safety problems, enforcement efforts are most effective when they are part of a comprehensive prevention effort,” Baker said.

For the newly created refinery inspection team to do its job, she said, it “must be provided with modernized regulations” that would make refineries provide proof that they identify and fix hazards. The Department of Industrial Relations is drawing up such rules, Baker said.

Big enough team?

Federal officials aren’t sure that even a 19-inspector unit is enough, given that the state is responsible for ensuring that California’s 14 active refineries and 1,800 chemical plants are being run safely.

Great Britain, which has the same number of oil refineries as California, dedicates a team of four inspectors per refinery, backed up by scientific experts, said Holmstrom, who recently visited England to study its approach to refinery safety.

Hancock said she is determined to “figure out how to get the inspections done that we need, and if (state officials) can’t provide them, we ought to give it back to the federal government – let the CSB (Chemical Safety Board) run our oil refinery program. I’m looking to see evidence that there is some sense of urgency and commitment here.”

Wilson said California’s reform process has been rapid, by the state’s standards, but change “doesn’t happen overnight.”

Jaxon Van Derbeken is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

SF Chronicle: California refiners double volume of oil imported by rail

Repost from the San Francisco Chronicle

California refiners double volume of oil imported by rail

Lynn Doan  |  May 3, 2014

California, country’s biggest gasoline market, more than doubled the volume of oil it received by train in the first quarter as deliveries from Canada surged.

The third-largest oil-refining state unloaded 1.41 million barrels in the first quarter, up from 693,457 a year ago, data on the state Energy Commission’s website showed last week. Canadian deliveries made up half the total and were eight times the number of shipments a year earlier. Supplies from New Mexico jumped 71 percent to 173,081 barrels. Those from North Dakota slid 34 percent to 277,046.

Projects in works

West Coast refiners including Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp. are developing projects to bring in more oil by rail from reserves across the middle of the U.S. and Canada to displace more expensive supplies. Crude production in the federal petroleum district that includes California and Alaska, has dropped every year since 2002, while drillers are extracting record volumes from shale in states including North Dakota and Texas.

The surging flows of domestic oil to California “reflect a continuing improvement in crude-by-rail receiving facilities here,” said David Hackett, president of Stillwater Associates, an energy consultant.

Rail shipments still account for a small fraction of California’s oil demand. In February, the state imported more than 20 million barrels of crude from abroad, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Crude from North Dakota and Canada trades at a discount to Alaska North Slope oil, which rose 36 cents to $107.78 a barrel in early trading on Friday. Western Canada Select, a heavy, sour blend, gained 36 cents to $82.88. North Dakota’s Bakken crude also gained 36 cents to $95.28.

It costs $9 to $10.50 a barrel to send North Dakota’s Bakken oil by rail to California, according to Tesoro, the West Coast’s largest refiner.

Series of accidents

Trains are bringing more oil to California even as projects face more regulatory scrutiny after a series of accidents involving rail cars carrying fuel. The most recent was on Wednesday, when a CSX Corp. crude train derailed in Lynchburg, Va., igniting a fire that led to an evacuation. A derailment in Quebec in July killed 47 people.

The U.S. Transportation Department is studying changes to shipping oil by rail, and in February railroads agreed to slow such trains in urban areas. Canada ordered a phase-out of older tank cars last month.

Officials in Benicia said Thursday that they’re delaying until June an environmental report on a rail-offloading complex that Valero has proposed at its refinery in the North Bay city. The San Antonio company originally planned to finish the project by the end of last year.

Tesoro is six to eight weeks behind schedule in receiving regulatory permits for a rail-to-marine crude trans-loading terminal in Washington state, the company, also based in San Antonio, said Thursday. It now expects to receive the permits late this year or in early 2015, with construction taking about 12 months, Scott Spendlove, the chief financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts.

Alaskan oil output has declined every year since 2002 as the yield from existing wells shrinks.

Lynn Doan is a Bloomberg writer.

Earthjustice lawsuit against Kinder Morgan & BAAQMD – case overview

Repost from EARTHJUSTICE … because the Earth needs a good lawyer …

Challenging Crude-by-Rail Shipments to California’s Bay Area

The City of Richmond, home to a Chevron refinery and tank farm, is already burdened by intense pollution caused by the fossil fuel industry.The City of Richmond in California’s Bay Area is already burdened by intense pollution caused by the fossil fuel industry.  Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice

CASE OVERVIEW

Earthjustice, on behalf of Communities for a Better Environment, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, has filed a lawsuit against Kinder Morgan and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to halt the shipment of highly explosive and toxic crude oil into the City of Richmond, a community already burdened by intense pollution caused by the fossil fuel industry.

The Air District issued Kinder Morgan a permit to operate its crude-by-rail project in early February, without any notice to the public or environmental and health review.  The case asks the court to halt operations immediately while the project undergoes a full and transparent review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Members of the Richmond community, perhaps even members of the BAAQMD’s Board of Directors, did not know that a permit to transport crude oil had been issued for over a month.  According to longtime resident of Richmond and CBE organizer Andres Soto, the community is tired of being blind-sided and ignored.

Berkeley and Richmond city councils have voted to oppose crude-by-rail plans that involved trains running through their cities. The number of trains carrying crude oil around the country has risen dramatically in the last two to three years, due to the increased drilling in both the Alberta tar sands in Canada and the Bakken shale oil area of North Dakota.

The California Public Utilities Commission, office of Rail Safety, released a report in November 2013 listing a number of alarming railway safety concerns associated with the increased movement of crude oil by rail through California. The report specifically identifies California’s railroad bridges as a significant rail safety risk.

Bakken crude is extremely explosive and toxic. In January of 2014, the U.S. federal agency that regulates hazardous materials on the rails issued an alert, stating that Bakken crude may be more flammable than other types of crude. And in July of 2013, a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in a town in Quebec, Canada, killing 47 local residents and destroying most of the downtown area.

For safe and healthy communities…