BACKGROUND (by BenIndy Editor): On October 1, City Councilmember Terry Scott distributed without comment a link to a website, “Moving Benicia Forward”, movebeniciaforward.com. The front page invitation there reads, “We invite you to share your thoughts” and offers visitors to click on “Share Feedback.” This goes to a page with information about Signature Development Group, which is under contract with Valero “to evaluate redevelopment opportunities for the Benicia refinery property.” The page also offers a blank box for “FEEDBACK – Share your thoughts about the potential redevelopment.”
The Benicia Independent, by Marilyn Bardet, October 3, 2025
In my view, Signature Development Group’s setting up of an online platform inviting the public to submit ideas and comments for post-closure redevelopment of Valero’s ~900 acres seems like a well-meant gesture toward public involvement. I say “gesture” because such an approach to communication can lead to one-directional, top-down decision-making.
Since Valero’s announcement in April, Signature has been under contract with Valero to come up with a comprehensive re-development plan whose options would presumably be contingent upon, and possibly limited by, findings from investigations of soil and water contamination remaining from all uses by Responsible Parties, including the military. Yet, since April, the public has learned little or nothing from Signature about their initial thoughts, their approach, and preliminary reviews of conditions. What have the mayor and council members learned in conversation with Signature?
I’m seasoned in this: we’re well past the point of needing more info than has been spoken in generalities. We must get conversations out into the open.
BENICIA’S GENERAL PLAN AND A CITIZEN TASK FORCE
I don’t believe there is any substitute for the kind of “roll-up-your-sleeves-put-on-your-thinking caps” work done in person, when learning and respectful deliberation can take place among a broad-spectrum of community stakeholders. Any discussions on this momentous venture should be under guidance of the goals and policies of the Benicia General Plan.
Such a public oversight process is necessary and foundational to any plans for the Valero properties if those plans are to gain public approval. I believe Elizabeth Patterson’s reasoning and recommendation for establishing a community stakeholder task force now is absolutely sound, based on a proven record of what such an open deliberative process nets.
The task force could resemble a modified version of the General Plan Oversight Committee [GPOC], a council-appointed 17-member committee charged in 1995 to rewrite the city’s outdated 1978 general plan. (Note: in 1978, the refinery, then owned by Exxon, was new—only 10 years old!). As a professional planner, Elizabeth was appointed to facilitate the committee’s work, and under her leadership, GPOC members dove into discussions and debates on often contentious issues concerning land use, sustainable economic development, community health and safety, and community identity. Outside speakers offered expertise to inform GPOC and the public. The goals, policies and programs hammered out by consensus became the integrated guidance document required by the state, with legal standing, that we have today, inclusive of periodic updates. Our Benicia General Plan has stood the test of time and will keep evolving.
In effect, any decisions made for the Valero properties will shape the city’s future, for good or ill, and could represent a significant general plan “update”, thus invoking need for such a citizen task force.
The visions we collectively hold for our city’s sustainability and future development must entail hard-nosed assessments of prospective major changes over the next 5 – 10 years: changes that will be cumulative. (Think large-scale residential development currently proposed for Seeno property, the Arsenal, and now, possibly for portions of Valero property). Such changes deserve open public discussion that an on-going task force would serve as vehicle for: a public process oriented toward specific goals to ensure far-sighted oversight of what will unfold through cleanup investigations and redevelopment planning, inclusive of CEQA reviews.
While it may seem early in the game, so far, five months into it, no such public process has been set up by the city council to proactively engage residents as full participants in an endeavor that has apparently already begun.
CLOSURE CLEANUP BONDING — AND A NEVER IMAGINED REFINERY CLOSURE
In 1995, Koch Industries had come to town exclaiming the benefits of permitting a development proposal for a massive petroleum coke storage and shipping terminal at the port, which would serve all five Bay Area refineries. The public’s outcry in protest was enormous, and successful. Notable at that time, activists spoke up about the need for a secure bond to be required of Exxon that would pay for a future refinery cleanup. While Koch failed in its development bid, nothing came of recommendations for a “closure cleanup bond” to be put up by the refinery.
In 1999, the new general plan was adopted, just when Valero was negotiating terms with Exxon for purchase of the refinery. Though the general plan did not directly incorporate goals that specifically addressed the refinery’s possible closure, key policies addressed the need to protect residents from exposure to contaminated soils—the concern expressed based on the city’s oversight debacles revealed by the Rose Drive/Braito Landfill investigation and cleanup.
All that said, Valero Energy Corp’s announcement of its options for shutting down by April 2026, was a stunner. It became the hottest concern of the city, and respectively for the governor and legislature: nobody was prepared. The city instantly worried about projected serious “gap” in revenues, and the state, the significant “gaps” in the gasoline supply chain that shuttering production at the Benicia refinery would/could cause. Once it was determined that Valero wasn’t “taking” any of the state’s offers to stay open, the state seemed to walk away from the problems for the City raised by prospects of closure.
So, unfortunately, the city never imagined a future refinery closure, and thus, what legal obligations attendant on such an undertaking should be raised, such as a condition of any future development permit applied for by Valero. (For example, Valero’s permit for the 10-year Valero Improvement Project begun in 2003.) Thus, the city missed several key opportunities to impose a permitting condition that would, at the very least, require that Valero put up a bond dedicated for funding of closure and thorough cleanup of refinery properties.
As City Manager Giuliani said to me recently when I met with him to discuss my concerns, “We’re on our own now”. I’d just stated that there is no state law that requires full disclosure of total costs of a thorough cleanup. This bears repeating: there’s nothing in either our municipal laws or state law that would protect the City from any Valero failure to meet what the state and city should have formerly considered firm obligations for refinery closures and cleanups. Expecting a lawsuit to resolve such issues would be a David and Goliath contest.
WE’RE LEFT WITH QUESTIONS…
Will a citizen task force be established by council for the long-haul, to be dedicated to oversight of a cleanup process, and, ultimately, for reviewing re-development plans as proposed?
We of the Benicia community are now in the responsible position to publicly model what we mean by a process that oversees “refinery closure, cleanup and restoration” and appropriate sustainable future land uses for former refinery/military lands.
Marilyn Bardet
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
BCAMP Board Member
BISHO Working Group
Valero Community Advisory Panel
Vallejo-Benicia Indivisible is holding a second No Kings Day of Action on Saturday, Oct. 18 starting at 10 am at Unity Plaza, John F. Kennedy Library, 505 Santa Clara St. in Vallejo. The event will include inspiring local speakers and live music as well as songs from our Resistance DJ.
We will then march briefly through downtown Vallejo, ending around noon. As with all Indivisible events, this rally will be strictly nonviolent, joyful and uplifting.
The event will be one of more than 2,200 scheduled across the United States, protesting current presidential overreach that is causing harm by depriving ourselves and our neighbors of health care, food and the right to constitutional judicial recourse.
There will be barrels for our food drive for the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano Counties. Please bring packaged or canned foods, no glass or perishable items.
Scheduled speakers include Cassandra James, Solano County Supervisor; Allyssa Victory, ACLU Senior Staff Attorney; Will McGarvey, Executive Director, Solano Pride Center; Jaclyn Eyvonne, Vallejo Poet Laureate with original poem for this event; Mina Diaz, former Vallejo City Council member; Pastor Kim Kendrick, Community Congregational Church, UCC; and a representative from the North Bay Rapid Response Network, an organization protecting immigrants in our region.
Please dress for the weather, bring water, signs and sunscreen and your peaceful, joyful energy!
>> IN BENICIA: October 18th NO KINGS DAY! 1-2pm at the Gazebo (map: First and Military Streets). Bring your signs, your neighbors, friends, and family, and your goodwill. We’ll “parade” this block for the hour on the sidewalk.
>> IN VALLEJO: (as above) Vallejo-Benicia INDIVISIBLE is sponsoring a NO KINGS rally on Saturday, October 18, 10AM – 12PM, in Unity Plaza / JFK Library, 505 Santa Clara St. The Vallejo event is listed on the Vallejo-Benicia Indivisible Facebook page (including a map).
>> ALL OVER THE BAY AREA: Here’s a LIST of NO KINGS Oct 18 events in the Bay Area, starting with Benicia – scroll down and click on an event for more details. Or… go to the big nokings.org or mobilize.us map and zoom in. Then click on a city for detailed info.
In June, we did what many claimed was impossible: peacefully mobilized millions of people to take to the streets and declare with one voice: America has No Kings. And it mattered. The world saw the power of the people. President Trump’s birthday parade was drowned out by protests in every state and across the globe. His attempt to turn June 14 into a coronation collapsed, and the story became the strength of a movement rising against his authoritarian power grabs.
Now, President Trump has doubled down. His administration is sending masked agents into our streets, terrorizing our communities. They are targeting immigrant families, profiling, arresting and detaining people without warrants. Threatening to overtake elections. Gutting healthcare, environmental protections, and education when families need them most. Rigging maps to silence voters. Ignoring mass shootings at our schools and in our communities. Driving up the cost of living while handing out massive giveaways to billionaire allies, as families struggle.
The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.
Our peaceful movement is only getting bigger and bigger. “NO KINGS” is more than just a slogan; it is the foundation our nation was built upon. Born in the streets, shouted by millions, carried on posters and chants, it echoes from city blocks to rural town squares, uniting people across this country to fight dictatorship together.
Because this country does not belong to kings, dictators, or tyrants. It belongs to We the People – the people who care, who show up, and the ones who fight for dignity, a life we can afford, and real opportunity. No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.
Oct 3 (Reuters) – Chevron’s (CVX.N), opens new tab 285,000-barrel-per-day El Segundo refinery in southern California had taken multiple units offline on Friday after a large fire erupted in a jet fuel production unit, disrupting supply in the Golden State’s isolated energy market.
The El Segundo refinery is the second largest in California and Chevron’s second-biggest refinery in the United States. The facility supplies a fifth of all motor vehicle fuels and 40% of the jet fuel consumed in southern California.
The fire at the facility’s jet fuel production unit broke out on Thursday evening. No injuries were reported, and all workers at the refinery were accounted for, Chevron spokesperson Allison Cook said in an email.
Chevron on Friday said the fire had been put out.
It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion at the facility in the suburb of El Segundo, which supplies jet fuel for Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), located just north of the refinery.
“There is no known impact to LAX at this time,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said.
LAX declined to comment.
The fire broke out in the refinery’s Isomax 7 unit, which converts mid-distillate fuel oil into jet fuel, two sources said.
On Thursday evening, multiple units at the refinery were shut, including the 60,000 barrel per day (bpd) catalytic reformer, 45,000 bpd hydrocracker, and 73,000 bpd fluid catalytic cracker, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
The refinery’s crude distillation units were still online, two traders said, citing Wood Mackenzie data.
On the West Coast, traders were still assessing the extent of damage to the refinery, but early indications pointed to a small increase in motor fuel prices and potentially larger impacts for aviation fuel.
Gasoline prices in California, already the highest in the country, are expected to rise five to 15 cents per gallon for now as the refinery’s gasoline-producing unit was said to have not been impacted by the fire, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy.
California’s nearly 28 million drivers were paying close to $4.70 a gallon for gasoline in the state as of Friday, compared to a national average of under $3.22 a gallon, GasBuddy data showed.
However, airlines serving southern California will see much bigger impacts, with price for jet fuel surging by 33 cents a gallon Friday afternoon, De Haan said.
California will likely need to pull more jet fuel imports from refiners in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan to make up for the loss of El Segundo’s output, Asian trade sources said.
Southern California’s Long Beach region was receiving around 45,000 to 50,000 bpd of jet fuel imports in recent weeks, and would need to step that up by bringing one more cargo over the next few weeks, a market source said.
Fuel prices in California were expected to surge in the months ahead, as Phillips 66 (PSX.N), opens new tab is winding down operations at its 139,000-bpd Los Angeles-area refinery for permanent closure and Valero’s (VLO.N), opens new tab Benicia refinery is set to close in April 2026. Those two refineries produce roughly 20% of the state’s gasoline supply.
“In a region that was already expected to see some tightness in supplies after a refinery shutdown this December, the fire could provide support to (fuel prices) in the area and a scramble ahead of the closure,” said StoneX analyst Alex Hodes.
Local officials said no evacuation orders were issued for nearby residents, some of whom live in apartment buildings across the street from the refinery.
Residents of Manhattan Beach, located southwest of the refinery, were told to shelter in place until 2 a.m.
“Chevron fire department personnel, including emergency responders from the cities of El Segundo and Manhattan Beach are actively responding to an isolated fire inside the Chevron El Segundo Refinery,” Cook, the Chevron spokesperson, said on Friday.
“All refinery personnel and contractors have been accounted for and there are no injuries,” Cook said.
Los Angeles residents posted numerous videos of the fire online, saying they were stunned by the noise of the blast. A University of California-San Diego camera captured video of the explosion shortly after 9:30 p.m. PDT (0430 GMT).
A fireball from the blaze, along with the refinery’s safety flare – triggered by the fire – turned the sky orange over western Los Angeles, pictures showed.
Safety flares, which emit a tall plume of flame, are used when refineries cannot process hydrocarbons normally.
In addition to Chevron, state and federal safety agencies said they will investigate the fire after the blaze is extinguished.
In December 2022, an isolated fire in the refinery was quickly extinguished. In the U.S. so far in 2025, there have been several refinery fire incidents.
The refinery’s total storage capacity is 12.5 million barrels in about 150 major tanks. The sources said they were not sure how much jet fuel was currently in storage.
Reporting by Nicole Jao and Shariq Khan in New York, Erwin Seba in Houston, Shivani Tanna, Anmol Choubey, Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru, Stephanie Kelly in London, Trixie Yap in Singapore; Editing by Susan Fenton, Clarence Fernandez, Edward Tobin and Leslie Adler
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