Category Archives: Air Quality

Residents and environmental groups sue to stop Kern County crude oil project

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor: For details and contacts, see the press release by The Center for Biological Diversity.  Here is a link to the full complaint.  – RS]

Environmentalists sue to stop Kern County crude oil project

By Tony Bizjak, Oct. 9, 2014

A coalition of residents and environmental groups has filed a lawsuit challenging Kern County’s approval last month of what would be the largest crude-by-rail project in the state.

Kern officials unanimously gave the OK in September to the Alon USA refining company to transform a mothballed Bakersfield refinery into a combination refinery and receiving station for trains transporting crude oil from out of state.

It would be the largest crude-by-rail transfer station in California, twice the size of a similar facility being planned in the Bay Area city of Benicia by the Valero Refining Co. Potentially, the Bakersfield station could receive trains carrying flammable Bakken oil from North Dakota through Central Valley cities, including Sacramento.

The lawsuit, filed by Earthjustice, contends the county did not fully assess the project’s health risks to state residents. Those risks, Earthjustice says, include the possibility of explosions if trains derail enroute to the refinery. The lawsuit argues that the project will further degrade air quality in the San Joaquin Valley and cited the region’s high levels of pediatric asthma.

“Restarting a shuttered oil refinery is a huge step backwards for cleaning up some of the worst polluted air in the nation. This project will only exacerbate asthma and other respiratory illnesses that already plague Bakersfield residents and children at extraordinarily high rates,” said Gordon Nipp, vice chairman of the local Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club, which is a plaintiff in the case.

Kern County officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The county conducted what it described as a comprehensive environmental review before approving the project, and expressed confidence that the transports would be conducted safely.

Groups Challenge Sacramento Air District’s Furtive Approvals of Crude Oil Project

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor: See also EarthJustice’s account, and a Public News Service brief that appeared in the Benicia Herald.  Significant quote: “It’s becoming increasingly clear in California that the oil industry is cozying up to decision-makers who are deliberately bypassing environmental and health laws to usher in perilous oil transport projects that put people in danger,” – EarthJustice attorney Suma Peesapati.  – RS]

Sacramento air quality officials sued over crude oil trains

By Tony Bizjak, Tuesday, Sep. 23, 2014

A Bay Area environmental group has filed a lawsuit against the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District for failing to require an environmental review of a crude oil transfer station at McClellan Business Park.

The group, Earthjustice, accuses local air quality managers of quietly rubber-stamping permits for InterState Oil Company, allowing it to use McClellan as a site for transferring highly flammable crude oil from trains into tanker trucks headed to Bay Area refineries.

Earthjustice filed the complaint Monday in Sacramento Superior Court on behalf of the Sierra Club. It charges that Sacramento air quality officials and InterState failed to review the potential hazards of running trains of inadequately designed tank cars full of crude oil through neighborhoods, and asks the court to halt the transfer operations until a full environmental review is conducted.

InterState Oil Company has been making the transfers at McClellan since last year, initially without applying for a permit. Inspectors with the air quality district discovered the oil transfers and required InterState to file for a permit, but did not require the company to conduct any review of the environmental impact of the project. Permit documents allow InterState to unload an estimated 100 train cars every two weeks. Officials with InterState could not be reached for comment.

Air district official Larry Greene told The Sacramento Bee last month that the oil company had an existing permit to transfer denatured alcohol and that the switch to crude oil transfers didn’t cause any emissions increases. The district issued a permit this year for crude-oil transfers but considered that action “ministerial,” meaning it did not trigger an environmental review, Greene said.

Environmental groups said they see that stance as an abrogation of duty by local regulators.

“It’s becoming increasingly clear in California that the oil industry is cozying up to decision-makers who are deliberately bypassing environmental and health laws to usher in perilous oil transport projects that put people in danger,” said Suma Peesapati, Earthjustice attorney. “We saw it in Richmond, we saw it in Kern County, and now we’re witnessing it in Sacramento. If we’re going to stem the flood of fossil fuels into California and protect the public from hastily approved, poorly planned projects, we demand transparent and law-abiding leadership.”

“This is an example of a public agency skirting the law and failing to ensure that everything possible is done to protect the public,” said Terry Davis of the Mother Lode Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Earthjustice recently sued a similar operation in the Bay Area city of Richmond, where the Kinder Morgan oil transportation company currently moves volatile Bakken crude oil from trains to trucks that take it to local refineries. That lawsuit was rejected a few weeks ago in court when a judge ruled the six-month statute of limitations for a lawsuit had expired. That project involves 100-car oil trains that come through midtown Sacramento.

Attorney Peesapati of Earthjustice said she does not believe the statute of limitations issue applies in the Sacramento case because this week’s lawsuit is within six months of the air quality district’s initial permit issuance this year.

A handful of recent derailments and explosions involving trains carrying crude oil, notably the lighter and more volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota, have prompted federal and state officials to push for more rail safety measures.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/23/6729786/sacramento-air-quality-officials.html#storylink=cpy

UN summit: Businesses and investors pressing for green policy

Repost from The Associated Press

Businesses and investors pressing for green policy

By Johathan Fahey, AP Energy Writer, September 22, 2014
AP Photo
In this Saturday, Jan. 10, 2009, file photo, a flock of geese fly past a smokestack at the Jeffery Energy Center coal power plant near Emmitt, Kan. Hundreds of corporations, insurance companies and pension funds are calling on world leaders gathering for a U.N. summit on climate change this week to attack the problem by making it more costly for businesses to pollute. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of corporations, insurance companies and pension funds are calling on world leaders gathering for a U.N. summit on climate change this week to attack the problem by making it more costly for businesses and ordinary people to pollute.

The idea, long advocated by policymakers, economists and environmental activists, is that the world can’t hope to slow the heating of the planet until its cost is incorporated into the everyday activities that contribute to it, such as using gas- or coal-generated electricity, driving a car, shipping a package or flying around the globe.

Business leaders representing trillions of dollars in revenue and retirement savings say they worry that global warming threatens the long-term value of their investments, and they want world leaders to adopt policies that would provide a financial incentive to people to clean up their act.

That could include a tax on carbon emissions, a cap or some other mechanism.

“There’s a market failure that needs to be fixed,” said Anne Simpson, senior portfolio manager and director of global governance at the $300 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the U.S.

Despite a broad consensus that something needs to be done, it has been impossible so far for global leaders to agree on how to implement what amounts to a price on pollution, because energy is so important for economic growth.

“It may be easier to get large businesses to agree that something should be done than to get them to coalesce around specific policy measures,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

At Tuesday’s U.N. summit, 120 world leaders will try to summon some of the considerable political will required if a new climate treaty is to be reached at international negotiations next year in Paris. The one-day summit is part of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s push to help world leaders to reach a goal they set in 2009: prevent Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) from where it is now.

On Sunday, scientists announced that the world set another record last year for the amount of carbon pollution spewed into the atmosphere.

Ahead of the summit, business leaders such as Apple’s Tim Cook renewed or expanded pledges to help the planet by running their businesses more efficiently, investing in renewable energy or pulling their investments from fossil fuel companies.

Last week, CalPERS and other big asset-holders such as the insurance and financial firms Allianz, BlackRock and AXA Group called for a “meaningful” price on carbon emissions. The World Bank said Monday that 73 countries and more than 1,000 companies have expressed their support for a price on carbon.

Also on Monday, a parade of business and political leaders tried to rally support in a series of speeches in New York.

“It doesn’t cost more to deal with climate change; it costs more to ignore it,” said Secretary of State John Kerry.

Cook said customers care about the planet and will “vote with their dollars” for sustainably produced products. He outlined the steps Apple is taking to reduce the carbon emissions of its products and its supply chain, and called for broader action.

“The long-term consequences of not addressing climate change are huge,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can overstate that.”

While many insist a transition to a cleaner economy can boost economic growth or at least not harm it, many worry it would slow the global economy and make it more difficult for people in developing nations to get access to even basic electricity and transportation. Even those who agree that the transition must take place can’t agree on how to do it.

The International Energy Agency estimates that $1 trillion per year must be invested through 2050 in clean energy in order to keep global temperatures from rising past a level that scientists consider especially dangerous.

Charging a price for carbon emissions could prod polluters to change their ways by making it in their financial self-interest to do so. It would make fossil fuel investments less profitable and therefore less attractive. And it would make clean energy more lucrative.

A host of new investment vehicles are already making it easier for investors and others to sink their money into renewable projects. The market for so-called green bonds – tax-free bonds that fund clean energy, energy efficiency or other sustainable projects – is expected to at least double to $20 billion this year, for example.

Last week the $188 billion California Teachers’ Retirement System announced its intention to boost its investment in clean energy and technology to $3.7 billion from $1.4 billion over the next five years and said that could rise to $9.5 billion with changes in policy. Warren Buffet has said he is looking to double his $15 billion in investments in wind and solar projects.

On another front, a group of activists is calling on foundations and endowments to reduce or eliminate investments in fossil fuel-related companies and direct that money toward clean energy. The group, the Divest-Invest Coalition, said Monday that foundations representing $50 billion in assets have signed on, though the fossil-fuel investments in those portfolios are a very small percentage of the total.

Despite these signs, annual global investment in clean energy is only a quarter of what the IEA estimates is required.

“We’re moving tens or even hundreds of billions, but we’re looking at a $1 trillion every year, and if we’re looking at $1 trillion, we need policy,” said David Pitt-Watson, chairman of the U.N. Environment Program’s Finance Initiative.

Shale Oil Drillers Deliberately Wasted Nearly $1 Billion in Gas, Harming Climate

Repost from Desmogblog

Shale Oil Drillers Deliberately Wasted Nearly $1 Billion in Gas, Harming Climate

2014-09-04, by Sharon Kelly

In Texas and North Dakota, where an oil rush triggered by the development of new fracking methods has taken many towns by storm, drillers have run into a major problem.

While their shale wells extract valuable oil, natural gas also rises from the wells alongside that oil. That gas could be sold for use for electrical power plants or to heat homes, but it is harder to transport from the well to customers than oil. Oil can be shipped via truck, rail or pipe, but the only practical way to ship gas is by pipeline, and new pipelines are expensive, often costing more to construct than the gas itself can be sold for.

So, instead of losing money on pipeline construction, many shale oil drillers have decided to simply burn the gas from their wells off, a process known in the industry as “flaring.”

It’s a process so wasteful that it’s sparked class action lawsuits from landowners, who say they’ve lost millions of dollars worth of gas due to flaring. Some of the air emissions from flared wells can also be toxic or carcinogenic. It’s also destructive for the climate – natural gas is made primarily of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and when methane burns, it produces more than half as much CO2 as burning coal.

Much of the research into the climate change impact the nation’s fracking rush – now over a decade long – has focused on methane leaks from shale gas wells, where drillers are deliberately aiming to produce natural gas. The climate change impacts of shale oil drilling have drawn less attention from researchers and regulators alike.

A new report from Earthworks finds that drillers in North Dakota alone have burned off over $854 million worth of gas at shale oil wells since 2010, generating 1.4 billion pounds of CO2 in 2013 alone. The 1.4 billion pounds of CO2 produced by flaring equal the emissions from 1.1 million cars or light trucks – roughly an extra 10 cars’ worth of emissions per year for every man, woman and child living in the state’s largest city, Fargo (population 113,000).

Flaring at shale oil wells is now so common that satellite images of the largely rural state at night are dotted with what appear at first to be major metropolises but are instead the flares burning round-the-clock in the Bakken shale drilling patch.

But while the highly visible flaring in North Dakota has drawn the most media attention, the practice is on the rise in Texas, particularly in the state’s Eagle Ford shale.

“The Eagle Ford produces considerably more natural gas than the Bakken,” Earthworks noted. “In June 2014, the Eagle Ford Shale produced seven billion cubic feet per day, while the Bakken produced 1.3 billion cubic feet per day.”

In 2013, nearly a third of the gas in North Dakota’s Bakken was flared – but the numbers coming from Texas seem a bit more murky, in part because unlike North Dakota, Texas does not tax flared gas and – according to a new four-part investigative report by the region’s newspaper – the state has failed to track or control flaring adequately.

The year-long investigation by the San Antionio Express-News recently uncovered striking problems with the regulation of flaring in Texas, including:

  • Texas law forbids drillers to flare past 10 days without a permit – but out of the twenty wells that had flared the most gas in the state, the paper discovered that 7 had never obtained required permits. State law calls for fines of up to $10,000 a day for flaring violations, but regulators have issued a total of less than $132,000 in fines in the Eagle Ford since the boom began, despite over 150 “possible flaring or venting violations” found by state inspectors in the region between 2010 and 2012.
  • Statewide, 33 billion cubic feet of natural gas were flared or vented in 2012 – a 400 percent rise from 2009, when the shale oil rush arrived. The Eagle Ford was responsible for two thirds of the state’s wasted gas in 2012, totaling 21 billion feet for the year. Eagle Ford drillers burned off gas at ten times the combined rate of drillers in the state’s other oil fields.
  • That much gas produces enormous amounts of airborne pollution. “In the early days of the boom, flaring released 427 tons of air pollution each year. By 2012, pollution levels shot up to 15,453 tons, a 3,500 percent increase that exceeds the total emissions of all six oil refineries in Corpus Christi,” the paper wrote. “Moreover, flaring and other oil industry activity in the Eagle Ford released more ozone-creating pollution in the summer of 2012 than two dozen Texas oil refineries.”
  • Despite concerns over how these emissions can affect human health, the state operates just seven air monitoring stations in the region. It can take regulators up to 10 days to arrive to take samples when citizens complain about potentially hazardous fumes.
  • Texas’s environmental agency, the Railroad Commission, is run by a 3-member panel of elected officials. “The three Railroad Commissioners have raised $11 million from campaign donors since 2010,” the paper found. “At least half that money came from employees, lobbyists and lawyers connected to the oil and gas industry, according to campaign finance records.”

Flaring has angered environmentalists, landowners and even many in the oil and gas industry itself.

The Railroad Commission is statutorily required ‘to prevent waste of Texas’s natural resources’,” said Earthworks Texas organizer Sharon Wilson. “I don’t see how the Railroad Commission isn’t breaking the law by allowing drillers to waste natural gas by flaring it off rather than capturing it.”

“Nobody hates flaring more than the oil operator and the royalty owners,” Ron Ness of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, an industry trade group, told Reuters last year. “We all understand that the flaring is an economic waste.”

But the problem is projected to get worse not better. An environmental report from the Alamo Area Council of Governments predicted that by 2018, emissions of volatile organic compounds – which the EPA warns can have “short- and long-term adverse health effects” – could quadruple in the Eagle Ford.

Nonetheless, the EPA has decided to consider air emissions from each shale well, pipeline compressor or other piece of equipment individually when deciding whether there’s enough pollution for federal regulators to get involved – meaning that even though the Eagle Ford’s wells collectively pollute more than multiple oil refineries, the flaring escapes federal oversight.

New federal regulations, aimed at cutting down on the release of climate-changing carbon dioxide and methane from the wells and scheduled to go into effect in 2015, will require many drillers to use a process called a “green completion,” rather than flaring the gas or venting it to the atmosphere as raw unburned methane. Green completions can help reduce leaks by up to 99 percent, according to a study by the Environmental Defense Fund that has was heavily touted by the drilling industry and its advocates.

But those requirements only apply to wells whose purpose is to produce natural gas, not oil. This means the regulations will have little impact on shale wells in Texas’s Eagle Ford, the Express-News pointed out.

More than 1 million Texans live near the Eagle Ford, some of whom say they have suffered a litany of health effects that they suspect are tied to flaring.

We went from nice, easy country living to living in a Petri dish,” Mike Cerny, who lives within a mile of 17 oil wells, told the Center for Public Integrity.  “This crap is killing me and my family.”

There’s a simple way to spot a poorly-performing flare. “If you see a smoking flare that’s not complete combustion,” Neil Carman, a former state scientist who now works with the Sierra Club, told the Express-News. “If it’s not completed, you get a smorgasbord of chemicals.”

At times, the gas is simply released unburned directly to the atmosphere – a practice labeled “venting” by the industry.

Texas state regulators fail to distinguish between flaring and venting in their public production database, the newspaper pointed out, making it impossible to know precisely how bad the impacts of the pollution might be.

Photo Credit: Flaring Natural Gas in North Dakota, via Shutterstock