Category Archives: Bay Area Refineries

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Refineries, Tar sands crude

The Condor and The Eagle – A documentary film directed by Clément Guerra

Repost from YouTube
[Editor: See also Clément’s and Sophie’s website, The Takeoff.  – RS]

The Condor and The Eagle

A documentary film directed by Clément Guerra

In April 2014, Clément and Sophie Guerra began their epic journey here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Interviewing many of us who are working to stop Crude By Rail in our refinery towns, they have now released “The Condor And The Eagle – Mini Series – Episode 1- The Bay Area.”

After you watch this video, be sure to check out the other Condor and the Eagle episodes.

From the YouTube page:

Our project started 10 months ago in the Bay Area, CA. There is currently this feeding frenzy in 5 communities of the Bay of proposed projects to retool the refineries to receive, transport and refine dirtier bottom of the barrel oil: Bakken and Tar Sands. The communities are now coming together, ready to fight back and make sure that California won’t take part of this devastating mega projects that are Alberta tar sands. People are rising, more and more people come together. Nothing is done yet, it will take a lot of work to give the movement the kind of form that will make a difference. It’s about re-creating the foundations of an inclusive dynamic, focused on how to bring onboard those who aren’t yet.

Featuring:
– Pennie Opal Plant
– Andres Soto
– Marilyn Bardet
– Kalli Graham
– Ed Ruszel
– Bill Nichols
– Greg Karras
– Nancy Rieser

Bay Area Refineries, Benicia Industrial Park, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fracking, Oil spill, Valero Benicia Refinery

The Fight to Stop a Boom in California’s Crude by Rail

Repost from The Huffington Post
[Editor: Our friend here in Benicia, Ed Ruszel, has been featured in numerous online blogs and news outlets in this story by Tara Lohan.  This is an abbreviated version.  The article mistakenly gives a link to The Benicia Independent rather than Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community.  BSHC can be found at SafeBenicia.org.  – RS]

The Fight to Stop a Boom in California’s Crude by Rail

By Tara Lohan, 01/08/2015

Ed Ruszel’s workday is a soundtrack of whirling, banging, screeching — the percussion of wood being cut, sanded and finished. He’s the facility manager for the family business, Ruszel Woodworks. But one sound each day roars above the cacophony of the woodshop: the blast of the train horn as cars cough down the Union Pacific rail line that runs just a few feet from the front of his shop in an industrial park in Benicia, California.

Most days the train cargo is beer, cars, steel, propane or petroleum coke. But soon, two trains of 50 cars each may pass by every day carrying crude oil to a refinery owned by neighboring Valero Energy, which is hoping to build a new rail terminal at the refinery that would bring 70,000 barrels a day by train — or nearly 3 million gallons.

And it’s a sign of the times.

Crude-by-rail has increased 4,000 percent across the country since 2008 and California is feeling the effects. By 2016 the amount of crude by rail entering the state is expected to increase by a factor of 25. That’s assuming the industry gets its way in creating more crude-by-rail stations at refineries and oil terminals. And that’s no longer looking like a sure thing.

Valero’s proposed project in Benicia is just one of many in the area underway or under consideration. All the projects are now facing public pushback–and not just from individuals in communities, but from a united front spanning hundreds of miles. Benicia sits on the Carquinez Strait in the northeastern reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area. Here, about 20 miles south of Napa’s wine country and 40 miles north of San Francisco, the oil industry may have found a considerable foe.

2015-01-08-16000050785_df993da9dc_z.jpg

Photo by Sarah Craig

A recent boom in “unconventional fuels” has triggered an increase in North American sources in the last few years. This has meant more fracked crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale and diluted bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands.

Unit trains are becoming a favored way to help move this cargo. These are trains in which the entire cargo — every single car — is one product. And in this case that product happens to be highly flammable.

This is one of the things that has Ed Ruszel concerned. He doesn’t think the tank cars are safe enough to transport crude oil in the advent of a serious derailment. If a derailment occurs on a train and every single car (up to 100 cars long) is carrying volatile crude, the dangers increase exponentially. In 2013, more crude was spilled in train derailments than in the prior three decades combined, and there were four fiery explosions in North America in a year’s span, the worst being the derailment that killed 47 people and incinerated half the downtown in Lac Megantic, Quebec in July 2013.

Public Comments

In Benicia, a Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) regarding the Valero project was released in June 2014 and promptly slammed by everyone from the state’s Attorney General Kamala Harris to the local group Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community because it left out crucial information and failed to address the full scope of the project.

One of the biggest omissions in Valero’s DEIR was Union Pacific not being named as an official partner in the project. With the trains arriving via its rail lines, all logistics will come down to the railroad. Not only that, but the federal power granted to railroad companies preempts local and regional authority.This preemption is one of the biggest hurdles for communities that don’t want to see crude-by-rail come through their neighborhoods or want better safeguards.

The DEIR also doesn’t identify exactly what kind of North American crude would be arriving and from where. Different kinds of crude have different health and safety risks. Diluted bitumen can be nearly impossible to clean up in the event of a spill and Bakken crude has proved more explosive than other crude because of its chemical composition. It’s likely that some of the crude coming to Valero’s refinery would be from either or both sources.

Public comments on the DEIR closed on Sept. 15, and now all eyes are on the planning department to see what happens next in Benicia.

But the Valero project is just the tip of the iceberg in California.

In nearby Pittsburgh, 20 miles east of Benicia, residents pushed back against plans from WestPac Energy. The company had planned to lease land from BNSF Railway and build a new terminal to bring in a 100-car unit train of crude each day. The project is currently stalled.

But Phillips 66 has plans for a new rail unloading facility at a refinery in Nipomo, 200 miles south of the Bay Area in San Luis Obispo County, that would bring in five unit trains of crude a week, with 50,000 barrels per train.

Further south in Kern County in the heart of oil country, Plains All American just opened a crude by rail terminal that is permitted for a 100-car unit train each day. Another nearby project, Alon USA, received permission from the county for twice as much but is being challenged by lawsuits from environmental groups.

Closer to home, unit trains of Bakken crude are already arriving to a rail terminal owned by Kinder Morgan in Richmond. Kinder Morgan had been transporting ethanol, but the Bay Area Air Quality Management District allowed Kinder Morgan to offload unit trains of Bakken crude into tanker trucks.

2015-01-08-15812706088_224545d0cb_z.jpg

Photo by Sarah Craig

With all this crude-by-rail activity, some big picture thinking would be helpful. As Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote about the Benicia project, “There’s no consideration of cumulative impacts that could affect public safety and the environment by the proliferation of crude-by-rail projects proposed in California.”

A longer version of this story appeared on Faces of Fracking.

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 (BAAQMD), Bay Area Refineries, Fenceline communities, Greenhouse gas emissions

Industry perspective: BAAQMD advances plan to reduce refinery emissions

Repost from Oil & Gas Journal
[Editor: Good summary of details in the BAAQMD’s Dec. 17 vote.  See also primary documents: BAAQMD 12/17 agenda, (p. 73), and  REPORT: Bay Area Refinery Emissions Reduction Strategy (PDF)  – RS]

California Bay Area advances plan for enhanced refinery regulations

By Robert Brelsford, OGJ Downstream Technology Editor, 12/19/2014

California’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), the public agency responsible for regulating stationary sources of air pollution in the nine counties that surround San Francisco Bay, is moving forward with its plan to impose further emissions cuts on area refiners within the next 5 years.

BAAQMD’s board of directors unanimously voted on Dec. 17 to adopt the proposed emissions reduction strategy, which sets a goal of reducing refinery emissions by 20%, or as much as feasible, by 2020.

Adoption of the heightened emissions-control strategy follows BAAQMD’s October resolution (OGJ Online, Oct. 21, 2014) directing its staff to determine the best way to decrease emissions from area refineries by evaluating a range of approaches against a variety of factors such as reductions of “criteria pollutants” (pollutants for which air quality standards have been established), toxics,  and greenhouse gases (GHGs), as well as impacts on neighboring communities, the agency said in a statement.

“Our new refinery emissions reduction strategy continues and reaffirms [BAAQMD’s] commitment to significantly decrease harmful air pollution in our communities,” said Jack Broadbent, BAAQMD’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,” according to Broadbent.

Implementation of the emissions reduction strategy will involve ongoing work with community and industry participants during 2015 to develop and refine a package of proposed associated rules, BAAQMD said.

As part of the approved strategy, the agency said it will continue preparation of its proposed Petroleum Refining Emissions Tracking Rule (PRET), which would require refiners to provide updated health risk assessments (HRAs), install additional fence-line and neighborhood monitoring capacity, and compile annual emission inventories.

Preparation of a “companion rule” to PRET also remains under way, according to BAAQMD.

Earlier billed by the industry as another iteration of the “baseline rule” removed from a previous draft version of PRET amid a series of legal challenges under California law, the proposed “companion rule” would set emissions thresholds as well as mitigate potential emissions increases from area refineries.

The agency plans to present a final set of proposed rules to BAAQMD’s board of directors sometime in 2015.

While Bay Area’s five refiners plan to continue actively collaborating with BAAQMD on its emissions-reduction strategy, the agency’s goals may be a bit too ambitious within the proposed timeframe, according to the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA).

“The Bay Area refineries will constructively participate in the strategy’s rule making,” Guy Bjerke, WSPA’s Bay Area region manager, told OGJ.

“Our main concern with the strategy is the 20% reduction by 2020 goal which, given historic reductions over the past 10 years, are likely unachievable and impractical in just 5 years,” Bjerke said.

BAAQMD’s proposed strategy

To achieve its overall goal of a 20% emissions reduction from refineries alongside a 20% reduction in health risks to local communities over the next 5 years, the proposed strategy includes the following components:

• Reduction of criteria pollutants. Under a focused best available retrofit control technology (BARCT) program, BAAQMD will investigate  significant sources at refineries and pursue a variety of additional pollution controls at these sources. Rulemaking is already underway to reduce sulfur dioxide from coke calciners and particulate matter from catalytic cracking units. Several other rules to reduce refinery emissions also will be developed in 2015.

• Reduction of health risks from toxic air pollution. This approach will begin with requirements to reduce toxic emissions from key refinery sources such as cooling towers and coking units. The focused toxics approach will also include site-wide HRAs and the identification of sources for further emission controls, using health benefits as an important evaluative tool.

• Evaluation of GHG emissions. Under this approach, BAAQMD would track emission reductions at refineries incurred as a result of the cap-and-trade system under California’s AB 32 climate law, which requires the state to reduce its GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Refinery performance would be compared to third-party standards for best practices, with analysis of potential further opportunities for reductions.

• Continuous improvement. To ensure continuous improvement in emission reductions, refiners will be required to periodically evaluate the sources of the majority of their emissions in order to determine if additional pollution controls are needed.

BAAQMD previously acknowledged that overall emissions from the region’s five refineries, which already are subject to more than 20 specific agency regulations and programs, have been steadily decreasing.