Tag Archives: Bay Area

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Refineries, Environmental Impacts, Kinder Morgan, Public Health, Public Safety, Valero Crude By Rail, WesPac Energy

SF Chronicle: Green groups sue Bay Area Air Quality Management District

April 5, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from the San Francisco Chronicle

Oil trains into Richmond spark lawsuit

By David R. Baker, April 5, 2014

A BNSF Railway train, above, hauls crude oil near Wolf Point, Mont. Photo: Matthew Brown, Associated Press

Little noticed by neighbors, trains carrying crude oil from the Great Plains have been rumbling into a Richmond rail yard.

The cargo is the same kind of crude that fueled a deadly explosion last summer when a train carrying the oil derailed in a small Quebec town, killing 47. Now environmentalists are suing to prevent any more shipments to Richmond.

The suit, filed last week in state Superior Court in San Francisco, would revoke a permit issued by a regional agency in February that allows Kinder Morgan to unload oil trains in Richmond at a facility originally built to unload ethanol.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District granted the permit without studying how the switch from shipping ethanol to oil could affect the environment, said Kristen Boyles, staff attorney with Earthjustice, the group that filed the suit on behalf of four other environmental organizations.

A placard on a tank car in North Dakota, below, warns that it's carrying flammable crude oil. Trains like these are being used more frequently to deliver petroleum to California. Photo: Matthew Brown, Associated Press — A placard on a tank car in North Dakota, below, warns that it’s carrying flammable crude oil. Trains like these are being used more frequently to deliver petroleum to California. Photo: Matthew Brown, Associated Press

“These things are going in without a lot of thought to their safety, their impact on the environment and their possible health effects,” Boyles said. “That’s what’s really frustrating with this situation – how little we know until this is rolling through our backyards.”

Kinder Morgan declined comment.

Ralph Borrmann, an agency spokesman, said the change in fuels handled by Kinder Morgan’s rail-yard facility would not increase air pollution – his agency’s primary concern.

“There were no emissions consequences as a result of the permit, no net increase of emissions, which is what we look at,” Borrmann said.

Just a few years ago, California didn’t import oil by rail. But that’s changing fast.

In 2009, railways carried just 45,000 barrels of oil into the Golden State, according to the California Energy Commission. By last year, that number had soared to 6.2 million barrels. A barrel equals 42 gallons.

Petroleum glut

California’s refineries have turned to rail to access a glut of petroleum in the Great Plains. Oil production in the Bakken Shale formation that lies beneath North Dakota and Montana has surged so much, so quickly, that area’s pipelines lack the capacity to transport the fuel. As a result, the Bakken oil sells at a discount to other kinds of crude.

Oil by rail is “about discounted oil, delivered to your doorstep,” said Gordon Schremp, senior analyst with the Energy Commission.

The amount of oil carried by rail is rising nationwide. While most of those shipments reach their destination without incident, the United States and Canada have recently seen a series of oil-train accidents leading to explosions and fires, including last July’s derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. In January, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued an alert warning that Bakken crude, much lighter than many other grades of oil, may be more flammable as well.

Benicia refinery

The warning spurred opposition to a series of oil-by-rail projects in California. Valero’s refinery in Benicia is seeking approval to build a rail yard that could move 70,000 barrels of oil each day, replacing more than half of the petroleum the refinery now imports from abroad, via ship.

In Pittsburg, another project would bring in oil by ship, pipeline and rail. The $200 million proposal, by WesPac Energy, would refurbish an old Pacific Gas and Electric Co. facility to import, store and supply oil to Bay Area refineries.

Community groups have spent months fighting those proposals. But most Richmond residents knew nothing about Kinder Morgan’s Richmond rail facility until television station KPIX reported on the issue last month.

Kinder Morgan applied to convert its existing ethanol offloading facility last year, and won an operating permit from the air district in February. KPIX filmed trucks carrying oil from the facility to the Tesoro refinery in Martinez.

Tesoro’s comment

A Tesoro spokeswoman on Friday declined to confirm whether the refinery collaborates with Kinder Morgan’s Richmond facility. But she said the refinery uses about 5,000 to 10,000 barrels of oil per day taken from rail shipments, equal to between two and four train shipments per month.

Earthjustice and its partners in the suit – the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club – want Kinder Morgan’s operating permit in Richmond revoked until the company conducts a full environmental impact review.

“The risk of train accidents is huge with this kind of crude oil,” Boyles said.

A tanker truck is filled from railway cars containing crude oil on railroad tracks in McClellan Park in North Highlands on Wednesday, March 19, 2014. North Highlands is a suburb just outside the city limits of Sacramento, CA. (Randall Benton/Sacramento Bee/MCT) Photo: Randall Benton, McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Bay Area Air Quality Management District, California Air Resources Board (CARB), California Regulation, Climate Change, Environmental Impacts, Local Regulation, Public Health

Bay Area Air District sets new goals for 2050

April 4, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from The Contra Costa Times

Bay Area Air Quality Management District adopts plan to control greenhouse gases

By Denis Cuff Contra Costa Times
Posted: 04/03/2014

It has fought to rein in smog and smoke for years, but now the Bay Area’s air pollution board is tackling a new challenge: reducing greenhouse gases.

A plan to speed up work on reducing global warming gases from the region’s businesses, industries and residents was adopted Wednesday by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board.

Under one of the 10 measures, the district will review its industrial and business pollution rules to decide if changes are needed to cut down on carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.

Any changes in regional rules would be closely coordinated with the state Air Resources Board, the leader of the state’s climate control effort, air district officials said.

“It’s very important we complement what the state is doing and not cause confusion or conflict,” said Henry Hilken, the air district’s director of planning and research.

If rule changes are made, they likely will focus on making industries change operations to make less pollution, rather than to control it afterwards, he added.

The clean air agency also will increase its technical advice to cities and counties considering local climate action measures such as setting local building energy efficiency standards. The district also will help seek funding for those local agencies.

To prepare for the extra workload, the air district later this year will propose adding four new employees to work on greenhouse gas issues.

Under the plan, the district will monitor the region’s progress toward meeting state goals for reducing greenhouse gas levels 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

If the region isn’t moving fast enough, the district will announce it, then coordinate efforts by city, county, state, federal and regional efforts to close the gap.

Under old estimates yet to be updated, the Bay Area in 1990 generated some 87.7 million tons of greenhouse gases equivalent to carbon dioxide. An 80 percent cut would drop that to 17.5 metric tons.

Those figures are likely to be modified when the air district updates its estimates, officials said.

Actions to control greenhouse gases will not only protect the earth from overheating, but also help to reduce Bay Area smog and fine particle pollution, Hilken said.

Most of this plan is geared at actions to be taken in the next two years, before more permanent measures are adopted in 2015.

Bakken Shale, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Refineries, Public Health, Public Safety, Rail Safety, Rail tanker cars, Tar sands crude

Environmental groups sue Bay Area Air Quality Management District

March 28, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from KPIX 5, CBS SF Bay Area

Lawsuit Filed Over Fracked Oil Trains In The Bay Area After KPIX 5 Report

March 28, 2014

RICHMOND (KPIX 5) — Two weeks ago, KPIX 5 discovered trains carrying explosive fracked crude oil have been rolling into the Bay Area under everyone’s radar. On Thursday, four environmental groups have filed a lawsuit over it, calling the crude by rail terminal illegal.

Earthjustice attorney Suma Peesapati had no idea the long trains were coming into the Bay Area until she saw KPIX 5’s story.

“I was flabbergasted,” Peesapati said. “This just happened under the cover of night.”

Fracked crude oil from the Bakken shale fields of North Dakota can result in deadly explosions in a derailment. Yet we discovered the energy company Kinder Morgan started bringing 100-car trains loaded with the oil right into the heart of Richmond six months ago, all without having to go through any environmental review.

“We can’t hold up their permit because there is public opposition. As long as somebody doesn’t increase their emissions, we give them a permit,” Jim Karas of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District told KPIX 5.

Karas said since the rail yard was previously unloading ethanol trains, switching to fracked crude oil was no big deal. “Very small deal, very well controlled, very few emissions,” he said.

According to permit documents obtained by KPIX 5, Kinder Morgan claimed the operation “will not increase emissions beyond currently permitted levels”, and requested that the air district treat it “as an alteration, not a modification”.

“This hardly a minor alteration. I mean this fundamentally changes the nature of the operation and the environmental impacts,” said Peesapati.

Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of 4 environmental groups: Communities for a Better Environment, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The complaint claims the Air District’s “clandestine approval” of the project “ignores the well-known and potentially catastrophic risk to public health and safety.”

“These trains are rolling and they pose an immediate threat to the local community,” said Peesapati.

“It’s really a slap in the face against the people of Richmond,” said Andres Soto with Communities for a Better Environment. He hopes the courts will take action quickly. And not just because of the danger of explosions.

“There’s a number of chemicals that are constituents in this crude oil that are carcinogenic,” he said.

Adding to the risk, Soto said the tanker trucks that deliver the crude to local refineries. “It’s going to take three trucks to unload one train car and that is an extreme expansion of the number of trips by diesel trucks on our city streets and on our state highways.”

KPIX 5 reached out to Kinder Morgan and the Air District Thursday night. Both said they don’t comment on pending litigation. The lawsuit calls on the Air District to pull Kinder Morgan’s permit, and asks the judge to issue an injunction that would shut down the terminal until a full environmental impact report is completed.

Bakken Shale, California Regulation, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Oil Industry, Rail accidents, Tar sands crude

Berkeley City Council – No Crude By Rail – Sierra Club support

March 26, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from KPIX5 CBS San Francisco

Berkeley City Council Votes To Oppose Crude By Rail Plan

March 26, 2014 8:19 AM

A KPIX 5 crew captured this video of Bakken crude oil getting unloaded from a train at a rail yard in Richmond. (CBS)

BERKELEY (CBS SF) — The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to approve a resolution that opposes plans by Phillips 66 to transport crude oil through Berkeley and other East Bay cities to a new refinery rail spur in San Luis Obispo County.

City Councilwoman Linda Maio, who wrote the resolution along with City Councilman Darryl Moore, admitted in a letter to the community that railroads are exempt from local and state laws because they are interstate operators.

But Maio said, “That must not stop us from fiercely opposing their plans and demanding intervention.”

She said that among the actions that Berkeley can take are filing briefs in environmental impact lawsuits opposing Phillips’ plans, coordinating with other cities located along the planned transportation route, working with state legislators and lobbying California’s congresspersons and senators.

In a letter to other councilmembers, Maio and Moore said California refineries are in the process of securing permits to build rail terminals to import Canadian tar sands and Bakken crude oils from North and South Dakota.

Maio and Moore said under current plans, crude oil trains would enter Northern California via the Donner Pass and eventually travel along the San Francisco Bay through Martinez, Richmond, Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland using Union Pacific tracks.

From Oakland, the trains would use the Coast Line via Hayward, Santa Clara, San Jose and Salinas and continue along the Pacific Coast to the Santa Maria facility in San Luis Obispo County, they said.

Maio and Moore said the Phillips 66 project would transport 2 million gallons per day of crude oil through the Bay Area and that “Roughly 80 tanker cars per day of crude oil assembled in a single train would pass through our cities.”

“A crude oil accident could occur anywhere along the transportation corridor including the densely-populated Bay Area,” they said.

The two councilmembers said transporting crude oil can be dangerous, citing an incident last July in the small Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, where 72 tanker cars loaded with 2 million gallons of crude oil derailed, dumping 1.5 million of crude oil.

The resulting fire and explosions burned down dozens of building, killed 47 people and caused more than $1 billion in damage, they said.

The Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay chapter said in a statement today that it “strongly supports” the resolution by Maio and Moore.

Sierra Club staff attorney Devorah Ancel said, “The tar sands and Bakken crude are more carbon-intensive, more toxic, and more dangerous to transport than conventional crude oil.”

“Transport of tar sands and Bakken crude is growing at a ferocious pace – in 2013 alone more oil spilled from crude oil trains than has spilled from trains in the past four decades,” Ancel said.

She said, “These trains are not safe, they are not adequately regulated and they have no business traveling through Berkeley, the East Bay, or near any community or waterway that would be threatened by a catastrophic spill or explosion.”

Phillips 66 said in a statement that it “is committed to the safety of everyone who works in our facilities, lives in the communities where we operate or uses our products.”

“Preventing incidents and ensuring the safe and reliable transport of petroleum is our top priority while participating in the North American energy renaissance,” the statement read.

The company said it has “one of the most modern crude rail fleets in the industry, consisting of railcars that exceed current regulatory safety requirements and it began modernizing its crude fleet in 2012 “as a proactive precautionary measure to safely capture the opportunities of the rapidly changing energy landscape.”

Phillips said, “Our rail cars are inspected to ensure safe, compliant shipments, and we collect data to ensure compliance with the periodic maintenance plan for our rail car fleet” and its rail car program includes federally-mandated inspection, testing and repair of hazmat tank cars.”

The company said its Santa Maria facility is set up to process the heavier California-produced crude oil and the routes that train cars travel to reach the facility are selected by rail carriers.