Category Archives: Bay Area Refineries

Bay Area Refineries, California Regulation, Climate Change, DEIR, Environmental Impacts, Rail Safety, Valero Crude By Rail

KCBS Radio report on Valero meeting

Repost from KCBS Radio 740AM, 106.9FM

Valero Confirms Plans For Crude Oil By Rail At Benicia Community Meeting

March 25, 2014 1:14 PM
Refinery at Sunrise

The Valero refinery in Benicia. (James Irwin/CBS)

BENICIA (KCBS) – On the day a Bay Area state senator was voicing concerns over the transport of crude oil by rail, the Valero refinery in Benicia has announced at a community meeting it wants to do just that.

There was standing room only where about 200 people showed up for the meeting on Monday night at the Ironworkers Union Local 378 hall to hear Valero outline its crude-by-rail project.

[Audio with interview of Jan Cox-Golovich and others.]

Many who attended were skeptical of the plan which critics claim will result with two trains a day made up of 50 tanker cars each.

“It’s been proven that Bakken crude is a lot lighter and it’s very volatile and there’s been explosions and derailments and spills,” Jan Cox Golovich, a member of Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community.

But another attendee, Frank Sykes, said that using railcars would avoid a Cosco Busan or Exxon Valdez accident and that it would bring hundreds of jobs.

“I believe in Murphy’s Law—if it can happen, it will happen—but can’t live your life like that because nothing will ever get done,” he said. “If something was to happen out in the water ways, there’s a lot more damage that could be done.”

Environmentalists, however, point out that many rails lines traverse along the state’s rivers.

The meeting was peaceful but it was clear Valero has a long way to go to placate community members. Valero spokesman Chris Howe said the company understands there is opposition but said everyone will get a chance to weigh in.

“The environmental impact report is due out in the early part of next month, we’re expecting; the city will have a comment period,” he said

“It’s clear that the opponents of our project have a view; we scheduled this meeting tonight to bring some credentials experts.”

Bakken Shale, Bay Area Refineries, California Regulation, Spill prevention and response, Tar sands crude

Exxon Valdez anniversary: Rail spill response compares unfavorably to water-born spill response

Repost from KPIX5 CBS SF Bay Area

Rail Safety Of Bay Area Oil Shipments Doubted

March 24, 2014 2:20 PM

A KPIX 5 crew captured this video of Bakken crude oil getting unloaded from a train at a rail yard in Richmond. (CBS)

A KPIX 5 crew captured this video of Bakken crude oil getting unloaded from a train at a rail yard in Richmond. (CBS)

SSAN MATEO (KCBS) – Last summer’s oil train accident in Quebec that killed 47 people has lawmakers and others in the Bay Area concerned that it could happen here as the volume of crude oil from fracking and other petroleum products arriving from North Dakota and Canada to local refineries surges.

On Monday’s 25th anniversary of the 1990 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, State Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) said he fears the response to major oil spill will [fall] far short.

“Some of the trains that coming in—the tanker trains that crude oil will have 2.7 million gallons of oil on those trains,” he said.

In 2011, about 9,000 tank cars filled with crude oil were shipped into California by rail. In the next two years, that number is expected to jump to more than 200,000, according to the California Energy Commission.

About 10 percent of the oil will be headed to the five Bay Area refineries.

While most agree the response to water-born spills is good – the Cosco Busan tanker that struck the Bay Bridge in 2007 as an example – inland spills, however, are inherently different.

“When this oil is coming through California at the volume that it’s coming and the magnitude … we want to make sure that our citizens are adequately protected. We really don’t have the resources in place to do it,” Hill said.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget calls for a new 6.5 cents per barrel rapid response fee, but that’s for overland crude oil shipments only.

“Ethanol is just as toxic, hazardous chemical and there’s nothing in place to deal with that type of a spill.”

Curt Clumpner is a member of the Fairfield-based International Bird Rescue and got his experience during the 1990 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. He said the trains that traverse California do so alongside our rivers.

“It obviously increases the risk in terms of the environment and wildlife,” he said.

KCBS KPIX 5 and San Francisco Chronicle Insider Phil Matier said there are environmental activists who are against oil as a rule and will use such a possibility to scare people while the oil industry will likely oversimplify the issue by saying there is no need for concern.

“The truth is somewhere in between. We’ve had ethanol and we’ve had crude oil come around before but not in this volume.”

Bay Area Refineries, California Regulation, Environmental Impacts, Ethanol, Risk Assessment, Spill prevention and response

SF Chron: flood of oil tank cars “potential environmental disasters on wheels”

Repost from The San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate.com

Lots of oil in rail tank cars about to be coming to Bay Area

Phillip Matier And Andrew Ross
Sunday, March 23, 2014

FILE - In this Aug. 8, 2012 file photo, DOT-111 and AAR-211 class rail tankers pass by on the background as a man works at the Union Pacific rail yard in Council Bluffs, Iowa. DOT-111 rail cars being used to ship crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken region are an "unacceptable public risk," and even cars voluntarily upgraded by the industry may not be sufficient, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2014. The cars were involved in derailments of oil trains in Casselton, N.D., and Lac-Megantic, Quebec, just across the U.S. border, NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said at a House Transportation subcommittee hearing. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File) Photo: Nati Harnik, Associated Press

FILE – In this Aug. 8, 2012 file photo, DOT-111 and AAR-211 class rail tankers pass by on the background as a man works at the Union Pacific rail yard in Council Bluffs, Iowa.  DOT-111 rail cars being used to ship crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken region are an “unacceptable public risk,” and even cars voluntarily upgraded by the industry may not be sufficient, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2014.  The cars were involved in derailments of oil trains in Casselton, N.D., and Lac-Megantic, Quebec, just across the U.S. border, NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said at a House Transportation subcommittee hearing.  (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)  Photo: Nati Harnik, Associated Press.

Oil is flooding into the Bay Area – in rail tank cars that amount to potential environmental disasters on wheels.

In 2011, about 9,000 tank cars filled with crude oil were shipped into California by rail. In the next two years, thanks to the oil boom in North Dakota and Canada, the number is expected to jump to more than 200,000, according to the California Energy Commission.

About 10 percent of the oil will be headed to the five Bay Area refineries, which means traveling through Contra Costa and Solano counties. The question is, are we prepared to handle the spills or fires if there is a derailment?

“No,” said state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, after listening to 2 1/2 hours of testimony from emergency responders the other day at a hearing in Sacramento.

In a nutshell, the state has plenty of money for responding to waterborne accidents like the Cosco Busan oil spill in the bay in 2007 – but virtually nothing for handling spills on land.

“It’s not that crude oil is any more dangerous than ethanol or other products that we currently see on the rails,” said Chief Jeff Carman of the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District. “It’s just that with the sheer volume that will be coming in, we are going to see more accidents.”

First on the scene of any accident is likely to be the local fire department – but in Contra Costa and Solano, some agencies have closed fire stations in recent years or reduced the number of personnel per shift to deal with budget cuts.

Contra Costa Fire, for example, is down to 75 on-duty firefighters a day to cover 400 square miles and 600,000 people, compared with the 90 firefighters a day just two years ago.

To give an idea of the potential scale of an accident, the amount of oil that spilled from the Cosco Busan equals about 1 1/2 tank cars of crude. A full train could carry 60 times that amount.

“There is a potential for very serious problems and very disastrous problems,” Hill said.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com.
Bay Area Refineries, California Energy Commission, California Regulation, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Public Health, Public Safety, Rail industry, Rail Safety, Spill prevention and response

CCTimes editorial: Officials must oversee dangerous crude oil trains

Repost from a  Contra Costa Times Editorial

Despite unknown risks, highly volatile crude shipments suddenly routing through the East Bay

Contra Costa Times editorial © 2014 Bay Area News Group
Posted:   03/21/2014

Crude oil is not normally considered explosive. But lighter crude from the Bakken Shale formation of North Dakota, suddenly being shipped through the East Bay, is entirely different.

It contains several times the combustible gases as oil from elsewhere, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis. Randy Sawyer, Contra Costa County’s hazardous materials chief, considers it as explosive as gasoline.

In Quebec last summer, a train carrying Bakken crude derailed, exploded and killed 47 people. Subsequently, derailed trains in Alabama and North Dakota exploded.

“Given the recent derailments and subsequent reaction of the Bakken crude in those incidents, not enough is known about this crude,” Sarah Feinberg, chief of staff at the U.S. Transportation Department, told the Journal.

Yet, long trains carrying the volatile cargo started traveling through the East Bay last year. This calls for aggressive oversight from Martinez to Sacramento to Washington — before we have a disaster on our hands.

According to the governor’s office, rail shipments of oil into the state, including Bakken crude, are expected to increase from 3 million barrels to approximately 150 million barrels per year by 2016.

Kinder Morgan is unloading some of that cargo in Richmond, just blocks from an elementary school and the Point Richmond and Atchison Village neighborhoods, and transferring it to tanker trucks.

At least some of it is going to Tesoro Refinery near Martinez, according to Sawyer and a report by KPIX Channel 5. Tesoro — which recently demonstrated its lack of candor after two acid spills that sent four workers to hospitals — refuses to say whether it’s processing Bakken crude.

The implications are profound. The notion of transporting massive quantities of highly combustible crude through local neighborhoods should alarm the federal Department of Transportation, which regulates rail shipping.

The long trains are going right through the districts of Reps. George Miller, D-Martinez, and Mike Thompson, D-Napa. They must demand answers from the administration about why it allows this to proceed when so little is known.

At the local level, the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors must examine the adequacy of the county’s Industrial Safety Ordinance to make sure it can ensure that Tesoro and any other refinery that uses Bakken crude has taken adequate precautions.

Sawyer, the county’s environmental hazards chief, didn’t even know Bakken fuel was coming into the county until he saw recent press reports. Clearly the system is broken.