Tag Archives: California Air Resources Board (CARB)

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Bay Area Refineries, Fence line monitoring, Greenhouse gas emissions, Valero Benicia Refinery

Bay Area Air Board emissions plan draws response from Valero

Repost from The Benicia Herald
[Editor: The Benicia Herald is one of very few news outlets to cover the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s far-reaching  and highly significant December 17 initiative on refinery emissions.  The first Herald article just covered the facts, and oddly, is not posted on the Herald’s website.  As a follow-up to that story, our local newspaper either sought out comments from the Refinery or responded to Valero’s overture, not sure which.  Either way, we were treated on Christmas Eve to a front page Valero Benicia promotion of its wondrous efforts to control its emissions, and the supposedly small part Bay Area refineries play in contributing to greenhouse gases.  Note especially Valero’s resolve to “participate in any new rulemaking to ensure rules are reasonable and cost effective.”   Reasonable rules would surely protect community health and safety, no?  And according to whose costs should regulatory effectiveness be weighed?   For other reports on the Air District initiative, see The Contra Costa Times, and the Oil & Gas Journal. See also primary documents: BAAQMD 12/17 agenda, (p. 73), and  REPORT: Bay Area Refinery Emissions Reduction Strategy (PDF) .  – RS]

Emissions plan draws response from Valero

Refinery official: ‘Proud’ to contribute to better air quality
By Donna Beth Weilenman, December 24, 2014

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is hoping its new five-component strategy will reduce emissions from refineries in it geographic area.

The district’s Refinery Emissions Reduction Resolution, approved Oct. 15, sets a goal of 20-percent reduction in refinery emissions — or as much as is feasible — during the next five years.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is the regional agency responsible for protecting air quality in the nine-county Bay Area.

The announced strategy would show the Air District how to achieve that goal.

“Our new Refinery Emissions Reduction Strategy continues and reaffirms the air district’s commitment to significantly decrease harmful air pollution in our communities,” said Jack Broadbent, the district’s executive officer.

“This strategy will ensure that refineries are taking the strongest steps to cut emissions and minimize their health impacts on neighboring residents and the region as a whole.”

But refineries are just one industry that contributes to the San Francisco Bay Area’s air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, according to an official at Valero Benicia Refinery.

“By the district’s own data, Bay Area refineries make up only a small segment of overall emissions in the Bay Area air shed,” said Chris Howe, the refinery’s director of health, safety, environment and government affairs.

“These emissions have continued to decline over the last two decades,” Howe said, data which the Air District also acknowledged.

“We are proud of the significant contributions our refinery has made and will continue to make to improve air quality, especially with the installation of our flue gas scrubber in 2011,” Howe said, citing a major component of the Valero Improvement Project.

In addition, he said, “We will continue to participate in any new rulemaking to ensure rules are reasonable and cost effective when weighed against the many options the district has to regulate emissions in our air basin.”

Broadbent said the Air District’s announced strategy sets overall goals of a 20-percent reduction in both criteria pollutants from refineries and in health risks to area communities, both within the next five years. That is the strategy’s first component.

To do this, the Air District plans to investigate significant sources of those pollutants at the refineries themselves, and to examine a variety of additional pollution controls at those sources, he said. That’s the second component.

He said this would be done under the district’s focused Best Available Retrofit Control Technology program.

“Rulemaking is already under way to reduce sulfur dioxide from coke calciners and particulate matter from catalytic cracking units,” Broadbent said.

“Several other rules to reduce refinery emissions will be developed in 2015.”

The strategy’s third component would be the Air District’s approach to reduce health risks from toxic air pollution, Broadbent said.

He said it would begin with requirements to reduce toxic emissions from such refinery sources as cooling towers and coking units.

Site-wide health risks would be assessed, and sources for further emissions controls would be identified, with an eye toward health benefits, he said.

A fourth component would be evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions at the refineries and their reductions as a result of the cap-and-trade system put in place under Assembly Bill 32.

That bill, signed into law Sept. 27, 2006, requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to develop regulations and market mechanisms to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020.

CARB adopted a cap-and-trade program Dec. 17, 2010, allowing some emitters to buy credits at quarterly auctions for additional emissions.

Under the Air District’s strategy, refinery performance would be compared to third-party standards for best practices, with analysis of potential further opportunities for reductions, Broadbent said.

The fifth component concerns continuous improvement in emission reductions, for which refinery operators would be required on a periodic basis to evaluate the sources of most of their emissions to determine if more controls are needed.

Broadbent said the Air District would develop its package of rules in the coming year, and would be working with members of the public as well as refinery industry representatives to make any modifications in the proposed rules and to use the strategy to reach those stated goals.

In addition, the Air District will prepare its Petroleum Refining Emissions Tracking rule that requires updated health risk assessments, additional fence-line and neighborhood monitoring capacity and the compiling of an annual emissions inventory.

Simultaneously, the Air District will write a companion rule to set emissions thresholds and mitigate potential increases at refineries, Broadbent said.

Those rules are expected to be sent to the Air District’s board for adoption in 2015.

The San Francisco Bay Area’s five major oil refineries, including Valero Benicia Refinery, produce air pollution and greenhouse gases in the region, Broadbent said, and “these are already subject to more than 20 specific Air District regulations and programs, and their overall emissions have been steadily decreasing.”

The Air District’s website is www.baaqmd.gov.

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Refineries

20 By 2020: A Pledge To Reduce Bay Area Refinery Pollution

Repost from SWITCHBOARD, Natural Resources Defense Council Staff Blog

20 By 2020: A Pledge To Reduce Refinery Pollution

By Diane Bailey, October 9, 2014

Diane Bailey

The Bay Area Air District has been working for the past two years to craft regulations that track and limit refinery pollution as oil companies begin bringing in extreme new types of crude oil that put workers and refinery fenceline communities at risk.  Facing much more pollution from refining extreme crude oil, like tar sands and Bakken crude, and in the aftermath of the massive August 2012 fire at Chevron Richmond, a number of community and environmental advocates got together with refinery workers at the start of the rulemaking effort.  (below, the Chevron refinery and tanks loom large over North Richmond; Photo Credit: Environmental Health News)

Chevron richmond homes.jpgWe came up with the Worker-Community Approach to not only ensure that pollution would not increase from refineries but to track crude oil used and achieve continual progress on air quality by reducing 20 percent of refinery pollution by 2020.

Our challenge to the Bay Area Air District and to all Chevron tankfarm homes.jpgfive oil companies with refineries in the region is that given the tremendous amounts of pollution pumped out by refineries and impacting the health of fenceline communities every day, will they work together to commit to cutting pollution by 20 percent by 2020?  Here are five things you need to know about refinery pollution in the Bay Area that help explain why Refineries in the Bay Area are much more polluting than other refineries and can easily reduce 20 percent of their toxic emissions over the next five years:

1)      According to US EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Data: Bay Area refineries, on average, report more than twice the toxic chemical releases reported by Los Angeles Area refineries.

2)      According to the California Air Resources Board, emissions inventory data, Bay Area refinery emissions are estimated to decrease by 50 percent or more by 2020, making a 20 percent reduction by 2020 seem easy.  But projections are one thing; we need a reliable commitment in writing.

3)      The CARB emissions inventory data also shows that Bay Area Refineries currently emit 7 times more nitrogen oxides (NOx), 3 times more sulfur dioxide and at least a third more organic hydrocarbons (like benzene) than Southern CA refineries, yet Southern California refineries collectively have over a third more capacity.

4)      According to regional air district data, the Chevron Richmond refinery is much more polluting than its El Segundo “twin” that has the same design; Chevron Richmond emitted more than twice as much organic hydrocarbon and particulate matter (PM) and eight times more toxic benzene than the El Segundo refinery in 2012.  Going back to TRI emissions, Chevron Richmond released over 80 percent more toxic air pollution than Chevron El Segundo in 2011.

5)      According to a 2013 Statewide Audit, on a rough per gallon of gasoline basis, Bay Area Refineries are 50 percent more climate polluting, twice as polluting for organic hydrocarbons and NOx, almost 20 percent more polluting for PM and leak over three times as much benzene and almost five times as much formaldehyde relative to gasoline produced in Southern California.

Wouldn’t it be great if Bay Area refineries – Valero, Chevron, Tesoro, Phillips 66 and Shell – took the 20 by 2020 pledge?  They could use the same modern pollution controls that refineries in Southern California have installed.  This kind of commitment to clean air, is not only doable technologically, it is a smart approach to being a good neighbor and supporting community health.  The proactive Worker-community Approach to improving air quality also ensures that we won’t see an increase in pollution as oil companies bring more extreme crude oil into the region.  In fact, we would like to see refiners take a good neighbor pledge not to bring any extreme, dangerous crude oil into the Bay Area at all.  At the very least, they should pledge a 20 percent reduction of toxic pollution by 2020.  They did it in Southern California; Bay Area communities deserve no less.

THE PLEDGE:  A Worker-Community Approach to Emission ReductionsIn order to address the ongoing health hazards in refinery-impacted communities and prevent any increases in pollution caused by changing crude oil, the refinery rule should require:

1)  Each refinery is required to decrease refinery-wide emissions of pollutants that create environmental health hazards by at least 20 percent below the refinery’s baseline by 2020, showing adequate incremental progress of at least two percent each year;

OR

2)  If these reductions aren’t possible, a refinery needs to show that they are using the best available emission control technology (BACT) throughout the refinery (i.e., eliminate “grandfathered,” “non-BACT” and “exempted” sources in the refinery).

Sources & Notes:
  1. Refinery Capacity vs. Throughput: Refinery comparisons were adjusted by capacity as reported to US EPA and to the California Energy Commission.  Although annual crude oil throughput would be a better comparison point, it is not publicly available.  Thus an imperfect assumption that most refineries utilize most of their capacity must be made in order to compare emissions.  According to CEC, Southern California has roughly 1 million BPD refining capacity and the Bay Area has roughly 700,000 BPD capacity.  “A rough per gallon” refined basis is relative to reported capacity not throughput or production.
  2. CARB emissions inventory queries were run for 2012 and the future projection year of 2020 for industrial sources, taking the sum of the Emissions Inventory Categories: 040-Petroleum Refining (Combustion) and 320-Petroleum Refineries.
  3. BAAQMD Emissions Inventory Data for each refinery was transmitted to NRDC via Public Records Request, August 28, 2014 for years 2011 through 2013.