Tag Archives: KPIX-CBS

Crude By Rail, DEIR, Marilyn Bardet, Valero Crude By Rail

KPIX – Valero’s Oil-By-Rail Report Minimizes Risk, Alarms Benicia Residents

Repost from CBS Bay Area 5KPIX KCBS AM/FM
[Editor: With apologies for the commercial ad … KPIX reporter Joe Vazquez interviews Marilyn Bardet of Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community outside Benicia City Hall.  – RS]

Valero’s Oil-By-Rail Report Minimizes Risk, Alarms Benicia Residents

June 18, 2014 8:20 AM

BENICIA (KPIX 5) – A new report puts into writing a plan for Valero to bring two trains per day of crude oil in and out of its Benicia refinery.

Marilyn Bardet of the group Benicians For a Safe and Healthy Community received the draft environmental impact report Tuesday afternoon.

“What kind of cost are we being asked to accept in terms of risk?” she said. “When we’re bringing in trains that contain this much oil at any one time being brought into cities and through very sensitive ecologies.”

Benicia residents are nervous about the new rail-car plan, citing news reporting about the six major incidents this past year across North America where trains crashed, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil.

One crash in Canada resulted in explosions killing 47 people and destroying many downtown buildings.

But today’s report declares the risk of an accident in the Bay Area would be extremely low — so rare that a spill of a 100 gallons of crude oil or more between Roseville and Benicia would likely happen once every 111 years.

“It only takes one accident and it takes one displacement of one rail, or a misaligned wheel on one of those cars,” Bardet said. “This can happen and I don’t think they’re being honest about how you use statistics here.”

The report said this new plan to have the trains transport the oil would have some impact on air pollution but this would be significant less than the current plan of bringing it on by boat.

The Oakland City Council passed a resolution to become first California city to oppose the shipping of fossil fuels by rail. The resolution is largely symbolic since the federal government makes the rules for the railroads.

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Refineries, Kinder Morgan, Tesoro

Martinez Gazette: Background on lawsuit against BAAQMD and Kinder Morgan

Repost from The Martinez Gazette

Environmental groups look to halt shipment of crude by rail

Rick Jones | April 1, 2014

Environmental groups filed suit Thursday against the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) and energy company Kinder Morg­an to halt the shipment of highly explosive and toxic crude oil into Richmond.

Kinder Morgan receives crude oil by rail at its Richmond terminal, where it is transferred to trucks, under a Feb. 3 permit from the BAAQMD, of which Martinez City Councilman Mark Ross is a member.

A KPIX-CBS report found the oil is loaded onto trucks, some of which travel through Martinez to the Tesoro Golden Eagle Refinery.

A spokeswoman for the Tesoro refinery confirmed to the Contra Costa Times its facility receives between 5,000 and 10,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude. That is about two to four trains per month, and is received through a third-party facility, the spokeswoman, Tina Barbee, told the Times.

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court Thursday by Communities for a Better Environment, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, asks for a preliminary injunction against further crude oil operations at Kinder Morgan and suspension of the air district permit, pending a full review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

According the Earth First website, “the Air District (BAAQMD) 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 CEQA.”

“If the BAAQMD board knew nothing about the permit, it should be embarrassed, and it should actually exercise its authority and hold its staff accountable to the community,” Communities for a Better Environment organizer Andres Soto told Earth First. “The BAAQMD’s hush-hush permitting process for the Kinder Morgan permit reinforces the high level of distrust that the community has towards the BAAQMD staff. They lied to us during the Chevron fire, and now we are seeing them make backroom deals with industry in their permitting.”

Bakken crude, a light, flammable variety named after oil fields in North Dakota and an adjacent part of Canada,  is extremely explosive and toxic. In January, 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. In both the U.S. and Canada, as the number of train cars carrying crude oil has quadrupled over the past six years, accidents, explosions and derailments have dramatically increased. Last July, 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.