Discussion of Bay Area oil refinery-related projects postponed to May
By Tom Lochner, Contra Costa Times | 04/22/2014
SAN FRANCISCO — A discussion of five Bay Area energy projects and their permit status was moved to next month, after a regional committee hosting it spent most of a morning talking about another matter of public concern, the tracking of emissions from petroleum refining.
The Stationary Source Committee of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District tentatively rescheduled the energy projects discussion to May 1, said committee chairman John Gioia.
The five projects are:
Crude oil shipment by rail to the Valero refinery in Benicia;
A WesPac Energy crude oil terminal in Pittsburg;
A propane and butane recovery project at the Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo;
A hydrogen and sulfur recovery project at the Chevron refinery in Richmond;
Kinder Morgan’s ethanol and crude oil rail-to-truck transloading operation in Richmond.
Monday’s committee meeting focused on developing rules for tracking petroleum refining emissions.
Features under consideration include deploying “fence line” emission air monitoring systems and other community air monitoring systems; developing enhanced tracking methodology; and providing more opportunities for public review and comment. More hearings could follow, and the full board could consider adopting rules in October.
Issues of contention between environmentalists and representatives of refining industries include an emissions baseline, emissions reduction credits and a cap on emissions. Several environmentalists cautioned the board not to let tracking and collecting data become a substitute for action to clean the air.
Repost from The Sacramento Bee, Capitol Alert
[Editor: for more on Assemblyman Dickinson’s bill, see his press release here. I am unable to find the bill’s number as of this writing. The press release concludes with “The bill will be heard by the legislature in the coming months.” More info via Dickinson’s office: Contact: Taryn Kinney, State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0007, Tel: (916) 319-2007, Fax: (916) 319-2107 – RS]
VIDEO: Dickinson bill seeks crude oil train emergency preparedness
April 17, 2014 | VIDEO BELOW: The Sacramento Bee/Dan Smith
Pointing to the catastrophic derailment in Quebec of a train transporting oil and similar accidents, Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, has unveiled legislation to get emergency responders more information about crude-carrying trains that roll through California.
As the United States reaps the fruits of a domestic energy boom, driven in part by huge volumes natural gas extracted via hydraulic fracturing, the amount of oil transported via rail has grown apace. According to the California Energy Commission, 6.1 million barrels of crude chugged into California on trains in 2013, accounting for 1.1 percent of the amount processed at California refineries.
“It is safe to say that we’ve all become alarmed with learning about the large increase in certain types of crude oil and oil products that California refineries will be receiving,” Dickinson said during a Thursday news conference at the downtown Sacramento train station.
Now, with a Bay Area refinery planning to move huge amounts of crude oil on a rail line running through downtown Sacramento, Dickinson has proposed legislation requiring railroads to disclose more information about oil shipments to those who would be dispatched to handle a potential rail accident.
“Because of this rapid change in the transportation of crude by rail, state safety rules are simply not what they need to be,” Dickinson said.
Currently, railroads don’t have to notify cities in advance about their cargo. Trains carrying hazardous materials, like oil or acid, must have warnings stenciled on the side of the cars containing the dangerous commodities.
Under Dickinson’s bill, blueprints detailing facts like the volume of oil being transported in a given day; how many cars are being used; and the characteristics of the oil being conveyed would go to local officials. The state agency that now obtains that information would be compelled to share it with local fire and police departments.
“If (responders) know what they’re dealing with,” Dickinson said, “they’ve got a much better chance of controlling and containing the incident and also protecting their own lives.”
Gov. Jerry Brown has also taken note of the growing risk. Under the governor’s budget, the state’s Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response would get more money and staff to deal with the growing risk of inland oil spills. As it stands now, the agency responds to oil spills in marine areas.
PHOTO: 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. The Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton.
VIDEO: The Sacramento Bee/Dan Smith
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
“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
Repost from The Contra Costa Times
[Editor: These fines are for violations in 2010. In October of 2013, Valero agreed to pay $300,300 in fines for violations occurring in 2011 and 2012 (see SFGate story, Benicia Herald story). At that time, Mayor Patterson and I asked the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (independently) to consider making the fines available to the local setting where the violations occurred, a practice not without precedent. I never a definitive answer on my request from Eric Stevenson, the District’s Director of Technical Serevices. He did inform me in November 2013 that the District had scheduled a meeting with Mayor Patterson to discuss this request. I wonder what happened? It makes sense to me that the City of Benicia could finance better air monitoring using these funds. – RS]
Benicia refinery hit with $183,000 fine for air quality violations
(Vallejo) Times-Herald 03/28/2014 04:56:30 PM PDT
BENICIA — Valero has agreed to pay $183,000 to settle air quality violations at its Benicia refinery, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District announced Friday.
The civil penalty covers seven notices of violation that the air district issued to Valero in 2011 for incidents that occurred in 2010, according to an air district news release.
The violations were related to a December 2010 upset of Valero’s fluid catalytic cracking unit, which converts heavy gas oils into gasoline and other lighter compounds. The upset resulted in intermittent violations of opacity and particulate standards at Valero’s main stack over a 10-day period, as well as violations of carbon monoxide and sulfur standards at other affected equipment, the district said.
All settlement funds will be used to fund air district activities such as the inspection and enforcement activities that led to the settlement.
