Category Archives: Chevron Refinery

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Chevron Refinery, Communities For A Better Environment (CBE)

Lawsuit Filed – Chevron Refinery Permit to Pollute Exposed

NEWS ADVISORY by Communities For A Better Environment
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 5, 2014

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Lawsuit Filed – Chevron Refinery Permit to Pollute Exposed

Today Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) filed suit against the Bay Area Air Quality Management District for the District’s illegal permitting of the Chevron (“Modernization”) Expansion Project.  CBE had previously requested the District to revoke the permit that allowed Chevron to build a Richmond refinery expansion that could increase air pollution from one of the state’s biggest industrial climate polluters without required emission prevention and environmental reviews.

“Letting oil refineries expand without requiring—or even looking for—measures to prevent the resultant air pollution threatens our health” said CBE Attorney Roger Lin.

CBE discovered that the Air District staff granted Chevron “Authority to Construct” the project without an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), public review or analysis of whether the emissions from the project will even meet EPA’s national standards for the protection of public health and welfare from harmful levels of pollutants.  Chevron sought the approval despite court orders in 2009 and 2010 that invalidated its permits for a Richmond refinery project with many of the same elements.  The courts found its EIR for that project failed to disclose impacts of refining lower quality oil and improperly deferred greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation.

Chevron’s new project would switch to lower quality oil, and—if unmitigated—could increase refinery GHG emissions by 725,000–890,000 tonnes/year, increase toxic emissions, and worsen a cause of Chevron’s disastrous 2012 fire, according to a revised draft City of Richmond EIR that relies largely on the Air District to mitigate project air impacts.

“First, we discovered the permit to allow the ticking time bomb of crude-by-rail with no public disclosure or environmental review.  Then we discovered a permit that was stopped in the courts for a project that could be dirty, dangerous, and deadly.  The Air District needs to respond with answers and act immediately to stop putting communities at risk,” demanded Vivian Yi Huang, Campaign & Organizing Director of Asian Pacific Environmental Network.

“Issuing air district permits prematurely before CEQA review of the project has been completed makes no sense, especially to a corporation that has demonstrated criminal negligence leading up to the August 2012 explosion and fire. Experience has shown that monitoring alone is less effective than controlling the source of emissions from the outset. We expect BAAQMD to do a better job of protecting the health and well-being of our community” said Marilyn Langlois of the Richmond Progressive Alliance.

“It’s high time the Air Board members stand up to their staff’s errors in judgment in rubber stamping Chevron’s illegal permit and revoke it immediately,” stated Denny Larson of Global Community Monitor, a resident of Richmond. Larson added: “The people of Richmond have suffered enough at the hands of Chevron and the Air District staff—it’s time for a change!”

“The health impacts of this project cannot be understated. The project calls for substantial increases in local emissions, including many chemicals that are known carcinogens. This deeply concerns me as a nurse and as a community member. The public deserves full disclosure and an environmental review,” said Deborah Burger, RN, Co-President of the California Nurses Association.

In 2011, EPA delegated permitting authority to maintain national air quality standards to the Air District.  By repeatedly renewing Chevron’s permit since 2010, versus waiting for the revised and adequate EIR, and then asking Chevron to reapply for its permit under current, more protective requirements, the Air District dodged applying that delegated authority to the Project.  This ignores the new review’s findings of massive potential GHG and toxic particulate matter emission increases from the project that would otherwise trigger best available technology requirements to instead reduce emissions. Those protections are basic requirements of both CEQA and clean air laws–and desperately needed in the already-overburdened communities on Chevron’s fence line.

The Richmond refinery has been among the state’s three largest GHG-emitting facilities in each of the five years when the Air Resources Board reported those emissions (2008–2012), emitting more GHG than any other California facility three of those years. Its 2012 crude unit fire that nearly killed 20 workers and sent some 15,000 residents to the hospital was caused by Chevron’s failure to heed its own workers’ warnings about corrosion from higher sulfur crude, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board has found. Particulate matter air pollution from its catalytic cracker has increased to more than 1,700 pounds per day, more than 1,200 lb/day above the permitted limit, as the cat-cracker runs more oil produced from the heaviest parts of the crude stream, CBE’s review of Air District records has found.  All of these impacts could worsen if the project enables Chevron to refine even lower quality oil.

Contact:
Roger Lin, CBE   (510) 302-0430 x16
Nile Malloy, CBE  (510) 926-5737
Vivian Huang, APEN  (510) 282-0135
Denny Larson, GCM (415) 845-4705

Download this News Advisory in PDF format
Cal/OSHA, California Regulation, Chevron Refinery, Richmond, U.S. Chemical Safety Board

State hiring beginners for critical refinery-inspector jobs

Repost from SFGate

State hiring beginners for critical refinery-inspector jobs

State hiring new graduates for tough jobs that protect workers, public
Jaxon Van Derbeken  |  May 4, 2014

State regulators who were handed millions of dollars from the oil industry to improve refinery safety after the disastrous 2012 fire at Chevron’s Richmond plant are hiring inspectors out of college with little or no experience in the field, The Chronicle has learned.

The Legislature assessed new fees on oil refineries and dedicated the money for increased oversight in response to scathing federal criticism of the state’s refinery oversight leading up to the fire, which sent 15,000 people to hospitals complaining of respiratory and other problems. Federal investigators found that California conducted too few comprehensive inspections of refineries and that its lax monitoring allowed Chevron to ignore corroded pipes, one of which sprang a leak and started the fire.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which led the Chevron investigation, has also questioned the state’s inspection efforts in the wake of an acid spill in February at the Tesoro Corp. refinery near Martinez that sent two workers to the hospital with chemical burns.

In its reports after the Chevron fire, the board called for the state to hire more “experienced, competent” refinery inspectors. At the time of the Richmond fire, the state had seven inspectors, several of whom had years of experience working at refineries but did not have sufficient engineering backgrounds to stand up to industry pressure, federal investigators said.

After Cal/OSHA, the agency responsible for inspections, acknowledged that seven inspectors weren’t enough, the Legislature approved $5.4 million in annual fees on oil refineries and said the money should be spent on at least 15 inspectors.

19-member team

The Department of Industrial Relations – which oversees Cal/OSHA – hired six new inspectors and transferred employees from elsewhere in the agency to create a 19-member team that will inspect oil refineries and other hazardous-materials plants. However, none of the new hires has any refinery safety experience, state officials say.

Most have bachelor’s degrees in engineering and some have master’s, said Mike Wilson, chief scientist for Cal/OSHA, but none has ever worked in a refinery or done an inspection at one.

“We have some young new people – I am confident they will all be up to speed to where we intend to take this program,” said Christine Baker, head of the Department of Industrial Relations. “They are all very qualified people, or they would not even be considered to meet the civil service standards of this position.”

They will join existing refinery inspectors and six transfers from elsewhere in Cal/OSHA in the new unit, Wilson said. The transferred inspectors have not worked at refineries either.

Sponsor’s concerns

State Sen. Loni Hancock, author of the bill that raised the money for new inspectors, said she has pressed state officials to explain their hiring strategy, and so far is not satisfied.

“I am trying to get enough highly qualified inspectors on board so we don’t have a Tesoro a year after we have a Chevron,” said Hancock, D-Berkeley. She said she has asked Cal/OSHA why it is hiring recent engineering graduates instead of industry veterans, but “we have not gotten those answers yet.”

Wilson said the hires and transfers will undergo training over several months before starting inspections. Cal/OSHA expects its beefed-up unit to conduct comprehensive inspections at four refineries per year, each lasting roughly five months – compared with the 50 to 70 hours of staff time typical of inspections before the Chevron fire.

An official with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board questioned whether Cal/OSHA was taking the right approach in its hiring.

“They need more experienced people,” said Don Holmstrom, head of the federal agency’s Western region investigations office. “Not all of the people need to be experienced people, but you could have half of them with 10 or more years in a refinery or a chemical plant.”

Only about one-fourth of the 19 inspectors in the beefed-up inspection unit will have that much experience, according to numbers provided by the Department of Industrial Relations. All of those were with Cal/OSHA at the time of the Chevron fire.

“It doesn’t sound necessarily like they are hiring the same kind of people we would hire,” Holmstrom said.

Hancock said lawmakers wanted “enough highly qualified inspectors to go into these very dangerous and complex places – people who are skilled engineers in this area – and make sure safety regulations are being met.”

Ready for challenges

Only inspectors with experience and knowledge will be equipped to take on companies like Chevron with “armies of lawyers who are qualified and highly trained, and they challenge every fine, every finding, no matter how small, and string it out,” Hancock said.

Holmstrom echoed Hancock’s concerns, adding that even the holdover veterans at Cal/OSHA aren’t “chemical engineers with refinery experience.”

They may have experience operating refineries, he said, “but don’t have technical experience needed to challenge the companies. Without it, that’s not going to happen.”

Baker said the holdovers have “over 60 years of combined hands-on experience in refinery work, which has contributed enormously to the effectiveness of our oversight.”

She added that although “staffing is critical” to improving refinery safety, increased staffing alone is “insufficient to improve refinery safety at the pace and scale that I believe is needed.”

“Like most public health and safety problems, enforcement efforts are most effective when they are part of a comprehensive prevention effort,” Baker said.

For the newly created refinery inspection team to do its job, she said, it “must be provided with modernized regulations” that would make refineries provide proof that they identify and fix hazards. The Department of Industrial Relations is drawing up such rules, Baker said.

Big enough team?

Federal officials aren’t sure that even a 19-inspector unit is enough, given that the state is responsible for ensuring that California’s 14 active refineries and 1,800 chemical plants are being run safely.

Great Britain, which has the same number of oil refineries as California, dedicates a team of four inspectors per refinery, backed up by scientific experts, said Holmstrom, who recently visited England to study its approach to refinery safety.

Hancock said she is determined to “figure out how to get the inspections done that we need, and if (state officials) can’t provide them, we ought to give it back to the federal government – let the CSB (Chemical Safety Board) run our oil refinery program. I’m looking to see evidence that there is some sense of urgency and commitment here.”

Wilson said California’s reform process has been rapid, by the state’s standards, but change “doesn’t happen overnight.”

Jaxon Van Derbeken is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.
Bakken Crude, Bay Area Refineries, Chevron Refinery, Local Regulation, Tar sands crude

KQED interview regarding Chevron Richmond expansion project

Repost from KQED Forum, with Michael Krasny
[Editor – Check out Michal Krasny’s interview to hear our own Andrés Soto’s critique of the Chevron project in Richmond.  In addition to his work in Richmond with Communities for a Better Environment, Andrés is a Benicia resident and volunteer with Benicians For A Safe and Healthy Community.  – RS]

Chevron Tries Again to Revamp Richmond Refinery

Wed, Apr 16, 2014  —  9:30 AM

A view of the Chevron refinery from its wharf, where ships deliver crude oil.  – Josh Cassidy/KQED


Chevron wants to begin a billion-dollar construction project at its Richmond refinery after environmentalists sued to stop a similar plan a few years ago. The company points to the environmental impact report and says the new facility will be cleaner and safer, but community advocates worry the plan could increase pollution.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:

  • Andrés Soto, Richmond organizer for Communities for a Better Environment
  • Nicole Barber, spokesperson for Chevron in Richmond
Bakken Crude, Chevron Refinery, Environmental Impacts, Richmond, Tar sands crude

KQED report: Chevron expansion project

Repost from KQED Science

Chevron Tries Again With Richmond Refinery Revamp

 Molly Samuel, KQED Science | April 14, 2014

The rust-red painted tanks of Chevron’s Richmond refinery are a familiar sight for drivers in the East Bay. The facility, sprawling across about four and a half miles at the foot of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, is the biggest refinery in Northern California.

It was built in 1902. Picture those black and white photos of Victorian ladies after the 1906 earthquake. The refinery was already here, chugging along.

“There was pretty much nothing else here. It just looked like an open plain,” said Chevron’s Brian Hubinger.

Today, according to the company, one out of every five cars on the road in the Bay Area is driving with gas from here, and two-thirds of the jet fuel used at Bay Area airports starts here.

Now Chevron is looking to launch a billion-dollar construction project at the refinery. It’s a slimmed down version of a project that environmentalists stopped with a lawsuit a few years ago.

After that legal battle and a fire at the refinery in 2012, Chevron is trying to win back the community’s trust not only with a new environmental impact report on the project, but also with a company-published local news website and billboards celebrating the city of Richmond, and TV ads supporting the proposed project.

A view of the Chevron refinery from its wharf, where ships deliver crude oil. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

A view of the refinery from its wharf, where ships deliver crude oil. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

Hubinger, the technical advisor for what Chevron’s calling its modernization project took me on a tour of the facility. (Critics of the project are more apt to call it an “expansion.”) We drove to the end of the wharf where tankers full of oil from the Middle East and Alaska unload, and then back into the heart of the refinery, past right-angled tangles of pipeline.

We parked near what looked like a brown barn on stilts: Chevron’s half-built hydrogen plant. That’s how much the company was able to construct before a state court judge stopped the project in 2010. This plant would produce more hydrogen, more efficiently, than the existing one does.

Chevron wants the upgrade — and other changes it’s proposing — because hydrogen helps clean the sulfur out of crude oil. And the company wants to refine crude that has more sulfur in it.

The partially-built hydrogen plant. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

The partially-built hydrogen plant, the “barn on stilts.” (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

“It provides flexibility to the refinery to remain competitive in the future,” Hubinger said.

Chevron won’t say exactly where that oil would be coming from, but the refinery can only receive crude via ship. So this is not about using trains to bring in oil from Canada’s tar sands or North Dakota’s Bakken formation, the company says. Instead, the project would allow Chevron to process crude from declining oil fields, which are often higher in sulfur.

Here’s another case where, like “modernization” versus “expansion,” the language drives a point of view: Opponents call the crude that’s higher in sulfur “dirty.” In the oil industry, they call it “sour.”

There’s no debating, though, that sulfur is an impurity in crude oil, and that processing higher sulfur crude will affect emissions at the refinery.

“Whatever Chevron says, we have to look at the truth and not accept their word for it,” said Andrés Soto, an organizer with Communities for a Better Environment (CBE).

CBE, with other partner organizations, was the group that won the lawsuit to stop the earlier project. CBE argued, and a state judge agreed, that Chevron hadn’t provided enough information about how the project would affect air pollution.

Andrés Soto is the Richmond organizer with Communities for a Better Environment. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

Andrés Soto in Atchison Village, a neighborhood near Chevron’s Richmond refinery. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

“Chevron refused to disclose the crude slate quality that they would process as a result of this project,” Soto said. “If they were going to expand their hydrogen production, that was because they were going to be processing dirtier crude.”

Unlike Chevron’s last attempt at the project, this time its environmental impact report does provide details on the amount of air pollution that will be created. And it describes how Chevron will try to offset that pollution.

“Our commitments for no net increase are: no net increase in criteria air pollutants, no net increase in health risk and no net increase in greenhouse gas,” said Nicole Barber, a spokeswoman for Chevron. (Criteria air pollutants are particulates that the Environmental Protection Agency regulates for human and environmental health, such as lead, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides.)

Greenhouse gas emissions could go up by 15 percent or more if this project happens, but, Barber said, Chevron would offset that by buying carbon credits, giving money to greenhouse gas reduction programs in Richmond and making changes on-site like using LED lighting and reusing water. That’s on the climate change side.

In terms of emissions that could make people sick — toxic air contaminants and criteria air pollutants – Barber said Chevron will offset those, too. The company’s proposals include installing new burners that lower nitrogen oxide emissions and replacing three tanker ships with newer ships that have more efficient engines.

That’s all according to the environmental impact report. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which regulates emissions, and CBE have both said they’re still examining the report, and have no comment yet on whether the details Chevron provides are thorough and sufficient.

“We know they are claiming there will be no net increase in emissions,” said Soto. “And that sounds great. Except that the current level of emissions are already killing us. We have disproportionately high rates of cancers, asthma, other autoimmune diseases.”

Richmond is an industrial area. There are other refineries, shipping, trucking and factories. And year in and year out, Chevron’s refinery is one of the biggest polluters in the Bay Area.

Pipes inside the refinery. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

Pipes inside the refinery. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

Soto said the 2012 fire at the refinery is an extreme example of the health risks a refinery poses. The fire released a dark plume of smoke into the sky and sent more than 10,000 people to the hospital complaining of breathing problems

“That was an episodic exposure,” he said. “But then there’s the persistent and prolonged every day exposure that also happens.”

Richmond mayor Gayle McLaughlin said she wants the project and the 1,000 construction jobs it’s expected to create, but she also wants to make sure it’s safe. And she sees it as a chance to push Chevron for lower emissions.

“How often do we have an opportunity to determine whether or not to permit a $1 billion expansion project from a large refinery?” she said.

The draft environmental impact report is open for public comment until May second. The planning commission could vote on it as soon as this summer. There’s a public hearing on the project this week on Thursday night.