Category Archives: Bay Area Refineries

Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Refineries, Contra Costa County, Cumulative impacts, Rodeo CA

Contra Costa County: Supervisors order recirculation of environmental report on Rodeo refinery project

Repost from The Contra Costa Times
[Editor: Note the 8th paragraph (emphasis added).  Back in January of this year, the BAAQMD itself has – according to this article – “weighed in … saying the environmental report should include calculations of toxic air contaminant emissions from the refinery and assess cumulative health risks of other refinery projects in the region“.  Surely then, this is also true for the Valero Benicia EIR.  Can the City’s consultant be charged with calculating cumulative emissions Bay-Area-wide as part of its EIR?  Or should the BAAQMD issue its own inclusive estimates DURING the proposal’s 45-day comment period?   – RS]

Contra Costa County: Supervisors order recirculation of environmental report on Rodeo refinery project

By Tom Lochner Contra Costa TimesPosted:   06/09/2014

MARTINEZ — Health impacts related to a propane and butane recovery project at the Phillips 66 petroleum refinery in Rodeo should be studied before moving ahead with approvals, according to county officials, but the refinery claims that delay could doom the project.

The board voted last week 5-0 to recirculate the project’s environmental impact report and continue the public hearing, which also includes consideration of two appeals of the project’s land use permit, to Sept. 23.

Conservation and Development Director Catherine Kutsuris noted that the EIR does not include a cumulative study of health impacts on the surrounding communities recommended under a 2011 revision of the guidelines of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The health study must be completed and submitted for public comment before the EIR can be certified, Kutsuris said.

The Phillips 66 Liquid Petroleum Gas Recovery Project calls for installing new equipment to recover and sell propane and butane instead of burning the fuel at the refinery or flaring off excesses. The refinery says the project will reduce pollution while creating well-paying jobs and generating taxes.

“The economic realities are, if we recirculate and we have another delay, we will be canceling this project,” Sam Parino, operations manager at Phillips 66 Rodeo, told the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors at the June 3 public hearing, although the company later softened its stance.

The project has suffered a string of recent setbacks after breezing through the early stages of the approval process, beginning with the endorsement of the Rodeo Municipal Advisory Council last summer, followed by county Planning Commission approval of a land use permit in November.

A packed January hearing on the EIR and appeals of the Planning Commission land use permit led to passionate testimony from both sides.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District also weighed in at that time, saying the environmental report should include calculations of toxic air contaminant emissions from the refinery and assess cumulative health risks of other refinery projects in the region. There are pending projects at Chevron in Richmond, Shell in Martinez and Valero in Benicia. Also pending is an oil storage and transfer joint venture in Pittsburg by WesPac Energy and Oiltanking Holding Americas, with rail, marine and pipeline components.

Refinery spokesman Mark Hughes urged the board to order the health study without recirculating the EIR, saying it would be “tragic” if the refinery suffers economic loss and the community misses out on emission reductions and jobs promised as part of this project.

On Monday, Phillips 66 appeared to be backing down from its threat to scuttle the project.

“We will continue to pursue the land use permitting approvals of the LPG Recovery Project to ensure the long-term viability of the Rodeo refinery and the many jobs it provides,” Hughes said in an email. “We are confident that a revised EIR will ultimately help decision-makers and our community to better understand the benefits of the project and approve the application.”

Contact Tom Lochner at 510-262-2760. Follow him at Twitter.com/tomlochner.

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Refineries, Martinez CA, Shell Oil, Tar sands crude, Valero Benicia Refinery

Tar sands in our back yard

Repost from The Martinez News Gazette
[Editor: An excellent fact-filled summary on tar sands crude by our colleagues in the Martinez Environmental Group.  Note that Valero Benicia Refinery has admitted (in its open community meeting on March 24, 2014) that it may include tar sands crude in its “mix.”  See “NRDC report: Valero’s Magic Box.”  Also: “KPIX reports: Valero admits Tar Sands Crude, Fracked Oil could come through Benicia.”  – RS]

Martinez Environmental Group: Tar sands in our back yard

By AIMEE DURFEE & TOM GRIFFITH | May 22, 2014

Because fossil fuels are a finite resource, petroleum companies are now resorting to more extreme forms of oil extraction, including tar sands, fracking, and Arctic exploration. The tar sands are deposits of heavy crude oil trapped in sand and clay that are extracted using enormous amounts of water, as well as open pit mining, heat and horizontal wells. The largest deposit of Canada’s tar sands is along the Athabasca River in Alberta (Source: http://albertacanada.com).

Why is everyone so worried about the tar sands? First, tar sands oil extraction and production emit three times more carbon dioxide than the extraction and production of conventional oil. Second, tar sands extraction requires total destruction of pristine areas within the Canadian Boreal forest, one of the few large, intact ecosystems on Earth (Source: Friends of the Earth). Finally, the extraction of tar sands will have devastating global impacts. In a 2012 editorial in the New York Times, Jim Hansen of NASA famously wrote that if the tar sands are fully excavated, it will be “game over for the climate,” because Canada’s tar sands contain twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as has been emitted over the entire span of human history (Source: NYT! 5/9/12).

What does this have to do with Martinez? Shell Refinery in Martinez is currently receiving and processing tar sands (Source: CC Times, 6/1/13). Contra Costa County’s air is already very polluted, and this type of refining will only make it worse. Shell’s choice to refine tar sands will worsen the health of Martinez residents; pollution emanating from tar sands refineries are directly linked to asthma, emphysema and birth defects. (Source: Sierra Club, Toxic Tar Sands: Profiles from the Front Lines).

Additionally, the U.S. Geological Survey found that tar sands bitumen contains “eleven times more sulfur and nickel, six times more nitrogen, and five times more lead than conventional oil.” (Source: Environmental Integrity Project, Tar Sands: Feeding U.S. Refinery Expansions with Dirty Fuel).

But wait, there’s more … Shell also has a global role in profiting from the destruction of the climate. Royal Dutch Shell owns a whopping 60 PERCENT of the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada (Source: www.shell.com). If you Google “Athabasca tar sands,” you will see a veritable “Mordor” on Earth.

If all this makes you feel completely overwhelmed, get connected locally and join the Martinez Environmental Group. Climate change issues are happening literally in our back yard and we CAN do something about it.

If you want to stay updated on these issues and learn how to get involved, please go to http://mrtenvgrp.com/category/meetings.

Bakken Crude, Bay Area Refineries, California Air Resources Board (CARB), California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Greenhouse gas emissions, Heavy crude, Light sweet crude, Shell Oil

Contra Costa Times editorial: Shell’s new plan may serve to blaze new trail

Repost from The Contra Costa Times
[This editorial also appeared on May 24, 2014 in the print edition of the Vallejo Times Herald.]

Contra Costa Times editorial: Shell’s new plan may serve to blaze new trail

05/22/2014
The Shell Refinery is seen in Martinez, Calif. on Monday, May 6, 2013. The Bay Area's five refineries have moved toward acquiring controversial Canadian tar sands crude through rail delivery. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)
The Shell Refinery is seen in Martinez, Calif. on Monday, May 6, 2013. The Bay Area’s five refineries have moved toward acquiring controversial Canadian tar sands crude through rail delivery. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)

Discussions about reducing California’s greenhouse gas emissions often become both heated and hyperbolic. But a plan being advanced by one of the East Bay leading refineries should be neither.

The management of Shell Oil’s Martinez refinery has decided that it can operate effectively at current levels without using heavy crude oil as a base in some of its operations. Heavy crude requires much more energy, water and heat to process than the lighter crude.

We were thrilled to learn that Shell has filed paperwork with the county regarding its intent to shut down its coker operation, one of its dirtiest processes. Shell plans to replace it with processes that handle lighter crude, but not the more volatile bakken crude.

That is, indeed, good news for Shell’s neighbors in Martinez, but it is even better news for the environment.

Shell General manager Paul Gabbard told our editorial board that the process change will cut the refinery’s greenhouse gas emissions by 700,000 metric tons a year, which he said is equivalent to taking 100,000 cars off the roads.

It is not insignificant, especially during a drought, that this process change also will cut Shell’s water use by an estimated 15 percent. That works out to a savings of about 1,000 gallons of water per minute.

There also will be about 300 temporary construction jobs for local workers as the conversion is made.

But the biggest news is that Shell officials think this change, which they hope to have completed by 2018, will allow the refinery to meet the state’s stringent standards for greenhouse gas reduction before the 2020 deadline.

In 2006 the Legislature passed AB32, California’s landmark effort to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Most oil refiners in the state were not happy about the law.

After all, the legislation was designed to dramatically reduce the levels of six different emissions that are quite often associated with the manufacture of petroleum products.

Not only did it seek to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons emitted, it sought to do so by a whopping 25 percent statewide by 2020.

Many companies moaned that its target emissions were impossible to meet. The bill implicitly acknowledged that the goals were ambitious because it instructed the California Air Resources Board to develop regulations and “market mechanisms” that could allow for industrial operations that couldn’t meet the standards to purchase pollution credits through an auction from operations that had excess credits.

But if Shell’s reckoning is correct, and we think it is, it won’t need to do that — and this action could blaze a dramatic new trail that others in the industry should consider following.

Bay Area Refineries, Climate Change, Crude By Rail, Take Action

CRUDE – inspirational speeches & videos

Repost from C.R.U.D.E. (Crockett-Rodeo United to Defend the Environment)

INSPIRATION: Speeches and Educational Forum Film clips

This page has select video recordings of teach-ins from the 2013-14 Sunflower Alliance speakers series as well as the keynote speaker for the 350 BayArea DIrty Energy Clean Energy conference, Stanford University’s Dr. Marc Jacobson. Film clips from the Sunlfower Alliance forums (shown below) feature the following speakers:  Antonia Juhasz (investigative reporter, oil industry analyst and author); Greg Karras (refinery specialist and senior scientist with CBE); Marilaine Savaard (spokesperson from the Lac Megantic Citizens Committee); Diane Bailey (senior scientist, Natural Resources Defence Council); Mayor Gayle McLaughlin of the City of RIchmond; Pennie Opal Plant (Idle No More) and, last but not least, community activists Marilyn Bardet (Benicia), George and Lyana Monterey (Pittsburg) and Nancy Rieser (Crockett/Rodeo)

But first…

  • A MOMENT OF INSPIRATION FROM THE 2014 GOLDMAN ENVIRONMENTAL AWARDS (San Francisco)

THE ROBERT KENNEDY JR KEYNOTE SPEECH: For 25 years the Goldman family has been honoring grassroots environmental activists from all over the world.  This year, Kennedy opened the awards ceremony. His voice was hoarse but his words and spirit were passionate.  Kennedy pulled no punches and basically blew the top off the Opera House.

For all of you battle-weary activists out there, take heart!  There ARE folks out there — no different from you or me — who fight the Davy and Goliath battles and prevail!

Here are the 2014 award winners:  http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipients/current kennedyHere is Kennedy’s speech:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac86elWP-l0

  • SUNFLOWER ALLIANCE CRUDE BY RAIL COMMUNITY FORUMS 

Sunflower Alliance sponsored educational forums in Berkeley, Martinez, Pittsburg and Richmond informed the public about the dangers of crude by rail and the local refinery expansion projects, namely: Chevron (Richmond), Phillips 66 (Rodeo) Valero (Benicia) and Wespac (Pittsburg). Below are links that will give you access to speaker content from the Sunflower Alliance forums in both RIchmond  and in Berkeley.  These film clips are really the next best thing to being there!

girl with gas mask

To see presentations made by the 5 people below (filmed at the Bobby Bowens Center in RIchmond), click here  http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/video_clips_forum_on_crude_by_rail

  • Antonia Juhasz (leading oil industry analyst, author of Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill and The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s ,Most Powerful Industry – and What We Must Do To Stop It)
  • Marilaine Savaard (spokesperson for the Citizens Committee of Lac-Megantic Quebec, site of the devasting oil train explosion that wiped out the center of town and claimed 47 lives)
  • Gayle McClaughlin (City of RIchmond Mayor who has taken on Chevron)
  • George Monterrey (a community organizer from the Pittsburg Ethics Council, one of two organizations who have taken on the Wespac infrastructure project)
  • Pennie Opal Plant (Idle No More, SF Bay Solidarity and the Connect the Dots Refinery Corridor Healing Walks)

To see presentations made by the 5 people below (filmed at the Berkeley Ecology Center) click here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgpCKeWaLhk&list=PLpBEkz110SpOb-DDgp70S6Cd6swBTBoA0&index=2

  • Greg Karras (senior scientist from Communities for a Better Environment/CBE)
  • Marilyn Bardet (Community Activist from Benicia, fighting the Valero project)
  • Diane Bailey (senior scientist, Natural Resources Defense Council)
  • Lyana Monterrey (activist, Pittsburg Defence Council organzing around the  WesPac infrastructure project)
  • Nancy Rieser (activist from Crockett, one of many folks dealing with the Phillips 66 project in Rodeo)

If you keep watching…you will see more clips from a “Call to Action” sponsored by the group, Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community.

  • WATCH THIS SPACE FOR KEYNOTE SPEECH BY STANFORD PROFESSOR MARC JACOBSON AT MAY 2014 THE DIRTY ENERGY/CLEAN SOLUTIONS CLIMATE CONFERENCE IN THE SF BAY AREA

While we wait for the presentation to go up on the web, enjoy this video of David Letterman interviewing the professor! Click the link below to watch the Late Show segment.

http://vimeo.com/83279421jacobson