Oil Shipments Turn Albany Into “Houston on the Hudson” As Communities Across Country Fight Oil-By-Rail Proposals (via Desmogblog)
Thu, 2014-03-27 04:18Justin Mikulka Due to a massive increase in the movement of crude oil by rail in the past few years, communities across the country are facing the daunting prospect of becoming part of the oil industry’s infrastructure. In Pittsburg…
Repost from The Contra Costa Times
PITTSBURG — Heavy industry has long been woven into this city’s blue-collar fabric, ranging from chemical to steel to power plants. But so, too, are homes and upscale businesses along Pittsburg’s waterfront, which the city has worked to transform into a thriving bedroom community complete with a downtown cigar lounge and specialty food store that sells caviar.
Those two worlds collided with a developer’s proposal to ship domestic and imported crude oil to a vacant industrial parcel where 16 large storage tanks — now empty — once stored fuel oil used to run a former PG&E power plant more than 25 years ago.
The proposal has generated fierce community opposition, and in January city officials reopened a public review period for sections of a draft environmental impact report in response to safety, air quality and other environmental concerns. The controversy is a reminder of the tension that has long existed along the waterfront in Contra Costa County, which is home to power plants, refineries, manufacturing and other industrial sites that coexist uneasily with suburban housing developments and quaint downtowns.
“There are concerns at multiple levels. You’re bringing in something that is really flammable — material with the potential for explosion — and you are bringing it into a densely populated area,” said Susan Burkitt, who lives near the proposed project and is a founder of the Pittsburg Defense Council, which along with several environmental groups is fighting the plan.
To date, more than 4,000 residents in this city of 66,000 have signed a petition against the project, which would receive 88 million barrels annually of domestic crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota, Colorado, west Texas and New Mexico shipped by rail, as well as imported crude brought in by marine vessels, to a 125-acre parcel next to what is now the NRG power plant.
As part of the joint venture of WesPac Energy and Oiltanking Holding Americas, the oil would be shipped by pipeline from the terminal to local refineries. Pittsburg High School students have held an on-campus protest against the project and spoken out against it at City Council meetings.
Pittsburg, which takes its name from the legendary Pennsylvania steel town, has deep industrial roots. In 2010, steel manufacturer USS-Posco Industries marked 100 years of operations here, and Dow Chemical has been in Pittsburg since 1939.
Previous disputes have erupted over a decision by county supervisors in 1990 to locate the Keller Canyon landfill in Pittsburg and Dow’s plan to build a hazardous waste incinerator in 1992 (Dow later dropped the proposal). In 2009, refiner Tesoro stopped storing petroleum coke dust at its inactive terminal on East Third Street after neighbors complained about soot being spread into downtown.
The latest flap is not surprising, said former City Councilman Bob Lewis, who served from 1989 to 2002. “That’s a situation to be expected in Pittsburg, where residential uses are adjacent to industrial uses. It’s nothing new.”
But Joe Canciamilla, a former state assemblyman who served on the council from 1987 to 1996, said the city bears some responsibility for the conflict that has arisen over the WesPac project.
“The area is transitioning and becoming more residential than industrial. The city to some degree is responsible for engineering this kind of conflict by approving new residences close to a lot of these industrial sites,” said Canciamilla, referring to redevelopment efforts that have revitalized the city’s downtown. “The city spent millions of dollars subsidizing properties and development in the area, and then to turn around (and consider) putting in a massive new industrial development is certainly going to create some level of conflict.”
Critics point out that unlike the buffer zone around Dow’s Pittsburg operations, where the closest homes are about a mile away, there is no such buffer called for in the WesPac proposal. Growing national concerns about the safety of moving crude by rail has also spurred the opposition.
Drewcilla Wyatt’s home is about a quarter-mile from where WesPac wants to build a rail component that would unload 100 railcars of crude a day five days a week at an existing train yard along North Parkside Drive.
“Pittsburg has moved up since I came in. We have a functioning downtown,” she said. “We have enough trains. Trains run here all night and day. What if a train spills, what if it catches fire? This is so close to homes.”
Proponents of the $200 million project say it would help refineries take advantage of a domestic oil boom at a time when California production is falling. WesPac officials say the project would be safe, address environmental concerns raised by opponents, create jobs and provide $800,000 in yearly property tax and tidelands lease revenue to the city.
“I think WesPac is a very good fit for the city of Pittsburg. It is proposed to be developed in an area zoned for heavy industry, so that’s the only thing that can go in there,” said Brad Nail, who retired as the city’s economic director in 2011.
Nail said he understands that redevelopment in the area helped set the stage for conflict over the project. “But Pittsburg historically is an industrial town. … If you buy a home in the marina downtown area, you are very aware there is industry there.”
More than 1,200 housing units have been built since 1980 in the downtown and waterfront area, according to city records.
The desire to maximize the economic potential of Contra Costa’s waterfront has been a goal of Supervisor Federal Glover, who launched the Northern Waterfront Economic Development initiative last year.
Glover, a former Pittsburg councilman, has not taken a formal position on the WesPac project, and a consultant’s report prepared for his initiative concludes that the waterfront could become more competitive by bringing in new industries such as clean technology and green energy. But such changes are not going to happen right away, according to Glover.
“We are not going to run in tomorrow and be able to have all the nice green industries and the high-tech stuff,” he said. “It’s a blend, and how you are able to balance out what you have in the area.”
Repost from The Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Since at least last September, trains carrying tank cars filled with crude oil have been rolling into the former McClellan Air Force Base, where the oil is transferred to tanker trucks that take it to Bay Area refineries.
Until this week, Sacramento’s InterState Oil ran the operation without a required permit. Local fire and emergency officials who would be called upon to respond in case of a spill or fire weren’t informed it was happening. The McClellan transfers include at least some Bakken crude, extracted from shale by hydraulic fracturing, which regulators say is particularly flammable.
Jorge DeGuzman, supervisor of permitting for the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, said an inspector first discovered in the fall of 2012 that InterState Oil was unloading ethanol from rail cars at McClellan without a permit. The company then applied for a permit and received it in October 2012.
Last September, another inspection revealed that InterState was transferring crude oil from rail cars to trucks taking their loads to Bay Air refineries; again without a permit.
The company was not fined, and continued the ethanol and crude operations during the permitting process. The crude oil permit was approved this week.
Fuel transfer operations such as the one at McClellan have popped up in California and other states amid an energy boom driven by hydraulic fracturing of shale oil formations in North Dakota and elsewhere. While the oil furthers economic growth and energy independence, it’s also bringing unforeseen safety risks to communities, catching many state and local officials off guard.
“As long as it’s not stored, I don’t think it’s required for them to inform me,” said Steve Cantelme, Sacramento’s chief of emergency services. Still, he said, “I would like to know about it.”
State and local governments have scant jurisdiction over the movement of goods on rail lines, which is generally a matter for the federal government.
Federal regulators and the rail industry have taken voluntary steps to improve the safety of such shipments, including reduced speeds, more frequent inspections and using safer routes. They’re also working on a safer design for tank cars. But some state and local officials feel the response hasn’t matched the risk they face.
Fiery derailments in Alabama, North Dakota and Canada in the past several months have raised safety and environmental concerns about rail shipments of crude. On July 6, a 72-car train of crude oil from North Dakota broke loose, rolled down a hill and derailed in the lakeside village of Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The unusually volatile oil fed a raging fire and powerful explosions that leveled the center of town. Of the 47 people who were killed, five vanished without a trace.
The issue has received limited attention in California because the state has continued to rely on its traditional petroleum supply, which arrives on marine tankers.
But that’s changing. In December 2012, the state received fewer than 100,000 barrels of oil by rail. A year later, it was receiving nearly 1.2 million, according to the California Energy Commission.
“It potentially could be a fatal issue here in Sacramento,” Cantelme said.
The state projects that within two years, California could receive a quarter of its petroleum supply by rail. That would mean at least six trains of 100 tank cars every day, or 500,000 barrels of oil, passing through the capital. The capacity of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is 830,000 barrels.
InterState officials declined a request by The Sacramento Bee to observe the McClellan operations. The company also declined to answer questions The Bee sent last week about the facility, including how frequently the transfers take place and what safety precautions are taken.
In an emailed statement, the company’s president, Brent Andrews, said InterState has “the highest regard for safety procedures” and is “very thorough in our education and training with our employees.”
InterState’s new permit allows it to transfer about 11 million gallons of crude oil and ethanol a month at McClellan.
“That’s a lot,” said Darren Taylor, assistant chief of operations at the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Department.
Neither McClellan Business Park, where the operation takes place, nor Patriot Rail, the short line railroad that switches the cars there, were required to verify that InterState had the necessary permits.
Another company, Carson Oil, was unloading ethanol at McClellan without a permit, but has since received one. Carson, based in Portland, Ore., is also seeking a permit to unload crude oil at McClellan in hopes of securing a contract. Carson did not return phone messages and emails requesting comment.
“If we don’t see anything alarming, we don’t shut a business down just because they missed some paperwork,” DeGuzman said. “The inspector felt it was a paperwork procedure.”
The McClellan operation straddles the boundary between Metropolitan Fire’s jurisdiction and that of the Sacramento Fire Department. Both departments could be involved in an emergency response to the site.
After a reporter told him about the facility last week, Dan Haverty, the city fire department’s interim chief, sent his battalion chief and a hazardous materials inspector to McClellan, where they reported finding 22 tank cars loaded with crude oil.
Haverty said far more hazardous commodities move by rail through Sacramento, including toxic chemicals, such as chlorine and anhydrous ammonia, and that his department has planned and trained for emergencies involving those materials.
Taylor said he was “comfortable and confident” in his department’s capabilities.
But Niko King, Sacramento’s assistant fire chief, said he didn’t have a lot of information on what was coming through the region by rail and new risks his department might face.
“I don’t want to say we’re in front of the curve,” he said. “We’re definitely reacting.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation has required that petroleum producers test and properly label and package Bakken oil before it is transported. But once the oil reaches its destination, whether a refinery or a transfer facility, such as the one in Sacramento, it’s handled no differently than conventional crudes.
The McClellan operation falls outside of some agencies’ jurisdiction. The Sacramento County Environmental Management Department regulates crude oil storage facilities, but McClellan isn’t considered one.
“We regulate the stuff that’s there” for more than 30 days, said Elise Rothschild, chief of the department’s Environmental Compliance Division, “not the stuff in transit.”
The railroads bringing crude oil to Sacramento, meanwhile, are not required to tell local officials that they’re doing so. One of them, BNSF Railway, is the nation’s largest hauler of crude oil in trains, mostly from North Dakota.
Earlier this month, CSX, the largest railroad on the East Coast, reached an agreement with Pennsylvania’s emergency management agency to share information on the shipment of hazardous materials on its network, including crude oil.
But the agreement requires state officials not to make the information public. It is possible to determine where shipments are going, however. BNSF, for example, lists Sacramento as one of its crude-by-rail terminals on a marketing website. A Sacramento Bee photographer who visited the McClellan site recently found crude oil being transferred from rail cars to trucks, activity that was plainly visible.
Cantelme said he’s begun in recent weeks to organize a regional task force with other local officials and the state Office of Emergency Response in an effort to better understand the risks of such operations and develop a coordinated response plan.
“This is preliminary for us,” he said. “We’re just now getting into it.”
A McClatchy analysis of federal data showed that more than 1.2 million gallons of crude oil spilled from trains in 2013 alone. In contrast, fewer than 800,000 gallons had been spilled nationwide from 1975 to 2012.
“Nobody saw this incredible increase in volume,” said Tom Cullen, administrator of the oil spill prevention office in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. In his January budget proposal, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed increasing funding for the Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response and shifting its focus from marine spill to inland spills.
Other states where crude oil shipments have increased are taking action.
In January, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed several state agencies to review safety procedures and emergency response plans. That state’s capital, Albany, has become a hub for rail shipments of North Dakota and Canadian oil for East Coast refineries. Earlier this month, Albany County placed a moratorium on the expansion of a train-to-barge facility blocks from state offices until the completion of a health study.
Washington lawmakers considered several measures to address increased oil shipments, including a 5-cents a barrel tax on crude oil shipped by rail into the state, but the efforts died before the session adjourned last week.
Activists in the Bay Area cities of Benicia, Richmond and Martinez are fighting the expansion of crude oil deliveries to local refineries. Earlier this month, Elizabeth Patterson, the mayor of Benicia, called on Brown to sign an executive order similar to Cuomo’s.
Tate reported from Washington. Bizjak of the Sacramento Bee reported from Sacramento.
Repost from KPIX 5, CBS SF Bay Area
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.