Category Archives: Richmond

Bakken Shale, Bay Area Refineries, Berkeley, Environmental Impacts, Richmond, Santa Maria Refinery, Tar sands crude

ThinkProgress report: East Bay cities opposing crude by rail

Repost from ThinkProgress
[Editor: Note huge transport related emissions numbers at end of this story.  – RS]

Battle Begins Over Plan To Send Large Crude Oil Trains Through California Cities

By Emily Atkin, March 26, 2014
shutterstock_117462277
CREDIT: Shutterstock

A company’s plan to send massive trains of crude oil through about a dozen heavily populated California communities is starting to hit some roadblocks.

On Tuesday, the City Council of Berkeley, California passed a resolution recommending strong action against Phillips 66, the company that recently filed a project proposal to bring 80-car trains of Canadian or North Dakotan oil to its refinery in Southern California. If approved, that project would have the capacity to transport trains carrying 2 million gallons of crude oil 250 times per year on tracks that are currently used for Amtrak commuter rail, traveling through communities in the Bay Area, Berkeley, and Oakland.

It would be the first time crude oil could travel on trains through the Bay Area, the resolution said.

“A crude train accident could occur anywhere along the transportation corridor,” the resolution states, citing the July derailment of a 72-car freight train carrying Bakken formation crude oil in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec that resulted in a 1.5 million gallon oil spill and the deaths of forty-seven people.

Phillips 66′s proposed project intends to expand its Santa Maria Refinery, which currently processes crude oil that arrives via underground pipe from locations throughout California. But due to the decline in California’s crude oil production, Phillips 66 says it needs to look elsewhere for competitively priced oil. “These could include fields as far away as the Bakken field in North Dakota or Canada,” the company’s project description states.

The company says this would be done by building five sets of parallel tracks to accommodate the 80-car unit trains as often as 250 times per year. It would also build an above-ground pipeline to bring the oil from the trains to the refinery.

The Berkeley City Council’s resolution states that it will file comments in opposition of the project, which is currently before the San Luis Obispo County planning board. The council said it would also work with the city attorney to file “friend of the court” briefs on any lawsuit that challenges the project, and will lobby Congressional representatives at the federal level.

While railroads are generally subject to federal law, the City Council says they can also have an impact by denying land use and other permits if Phillips 66 refuses to mitigate harmful impacts its project might have.

One of those potential harmful impacts is the risk that a train would derail. The National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB] recently made recommendations that crude oil trains stay far away from urban population centers, citing the increasing rate of fiery accidents involving crude oil trains. Many of those accidents involved North Dakota’s Bakken Shale oil — the type Phillips 66 may decide to use — a type of oil which the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has warned could be especially flammable due to either particular properties of the oil or added chemicals from the hydraulic fracturing process used to extract it.

Another potential impact is the amount of greenhouse gases the project would emit, and how it would contribute to climate change. Phillips 66′s environmental impact statement says traveling from the Bakken oil fields to its refinery is a 2,500 mile one-way trip. Phillips 66 estimates that the project would emit 51,728 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MTCO2e) solely from transporting the crude by rail in states that are not California, and 8,646 MTCO2e solely from transporting the crude within California.

Overall, the whole project would emit 65,908 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent, the company said.

Bay Area Refineries, Berkeley, Crude Oil, Local Regulation, Richmond

Important issues affecting Benicia to be heard tonight in Berkeley, Richmond

Repost from The Contra Costa Times
[Editor’s note: Please understand the significance here, involving the Union Pacific rail line THROUGH BENICIA and across the BENICIA BRIDGE.  Of course, this is also of great importance to our friends uprail in Sacramento, Davis, etc., and across the Carquinez Strait in Martinez, Crockett, and Rodeo and downrail through the East Bay, South Bay and beyond.  To attend tonight’s meetings in Berkeley and Richmond, see details at the end of this article.  – RS] [The Berkeley resolution: “Opposing transportation of hazardous materials along California waterways through densely populated areas, through the East Bay, and Berkeley]

East Bay and South Bay passenger rail corridor proposed to move crude oil

By Tom Lochner, Contra Costa Times, 03/24/2014
A man crosses the Union Pacific Railroad tracks at Cutting Blvd. in Richmond, Calif. on Monday, March 24, 2014. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)

An Amtrak train passes over cars traveling on Macdonald Ave. as it departs the station in Richmond, Calif. on Monday, March 24, 2014. The tracks that carry Amtrak Capitol Corridor trains through more than a dozen East Bay and South Bay cities could become a rail superhighway for crude oil transports under a plan by Phillips 66.   (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)

BERKELEY — The tracks that carry Amtrak Capitol Corridor trains through about a dozen heavily populated East Bay and South Bay communities could become a rail superhighway for potentially explosive crude oil transports to Central California under a plan by the Phillips 66 oil company, Berkeley officials warn.

A project at Phillips 66’s Santa Maria refinery would enable it to receive crude oil from North American sources that are served by rail, according to a draft environmental report under review by San Luis Obispo County.

The report identifies the most likely source of the crude as the Bakken oil field that covers parts of North Dakota and Canada. Last July, a train carrying Bakken crude exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing 47 people and nearly destroying the town.

This latest project would add to a growing trend in California to receive imported oil over land via rail rather than by sea. The train cars filled with oil would roll through Sacramento, the East Bay and South Bay on Union Pacific tracks, switching to the UP’s Coast Line and on to Santa Maria, according to Berkeley officials who have analyzed the Santa Maria report.

At its peak, the Santa Maria refinery would receive five trains a week, each just under 4,800 feet long with 80 tank cars, two buffer cars and three locomotives, according to the document.

Bakken crude is light and less viscous than most other varieties of crude, including tar sands. Bakken crude has a lower flash point and is much more flammable.

Phillips 66 did not immediately respond to phone calls and emails Monday. But in a comment in the Santa Maria report, the company wrote that the Santa Maria refinery “is not equipped to process more than nominal volumes of light, sweet crude such as that from the Bakken oil field.”

Ellen Carroll, San Luis Obispo County’s planning manager and environmental coordinator, said in a phone call Monday that “Phillips 66 has indicated to us that they are looking in more detail into where they are actually going to be getting their crude from.”

Carroll said her office is reviewing more than 800 comment letters and that no date has been set for the next hearing.

The prospect of increased shipments of crude has provoked concerns among some residents who live near petroleum refineries, including Chevron in Richmond, Phillips 66 in Rodeo, Shell and Tesoro Golden Eagle, both in the Martinez area, and Valero in Benicia.

But the concerns were based on the notion that refineries would eventually receive crude oil by rail for their own operations, something that is already happening to a limited degree at Tesoro, according to industry sources. Now, the idea the Bay Area could be a transit route for crude oil headed elsewhere in California has spurred elected officials to action.

On Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council will discuss a resolution opposing the transport of hazardous crude by rail along the Union Pacific railway through California and the East Bay.

Teagan Clive, a Rodeo environmental activist, praised Berkeley officials for not sitting idly by.

“(The resolution) lays the groundwork for communities to decide for themselves whether they want volatile crude coming through their towns,” she said.

Also on Tuesday, the Richmond City Council will consider a resolution calling on the East Bay Congressional delegation to take steps to halt the movement of crude oil by rail in the nation until it is fully regulated.

“We want to avoid at all costs a tragedy in Richmond in the face of so many tragedies around the country and in Canada from this crude-by-rail type of transport,” Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said in an email Monday.

South Bay officials reached Monday said they had not heard of the plans.

Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt, in an email Monday, said only that “routing for potential crude oil customers will be determined at a future time” and that “currently, we do not move any crude oil through the Bay Area.”

The Santa Maria draft report does not refer specifically to the Capitol Corridor as part of a future transit route for the crude. It refers, however, to the Coast Starlight, which runs between Seattle and Los Angeles and uses the same tracks as the Capitol Corridor trains between Sacramento and San Jose.

The report analyzes some of the possible impacts on Coast Starlight schedules, but only from San Jose south.

“Potential impacts to the Coast Starlight schedule could occur anywhere north of San Jose as well,” the report reads. “However, north of San Jose, through the Bay Area, there are areas of multiple mainline tracks and a large number of commuter trains. Therefore, it is unclear how much the crude oil unit train would overlap with the Coast Starlight. Given this uncertainty, the (report) has limited the analysis to the Coast Line.”

Berkeley Vice Mayor Linda Maio, who is co-sponsoring the draft resolution with Councilman Darryl Moore, characterized the lack of specific mention of the Capital Corridor in the Santa Maria report as “sleight of hand-like.”

“If they want to rule it out, let’s hear it,” Maio said.

Staff writers Robert Rogers and Eric Kurhi contributed to this report. Contact Tom Lochner at 510-262-2760. Follow him at Twitter.com/tomlochner.

If you Go
What: Berkeley City Council
Where: City Council chamber, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

What: Richmond City Council
Where: Community Services Building, 440 Civic Center Plaza
When: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday

California Energy Commission, California Regulation, Crude Oil, Martinez CA, Richmond

California Energy Commission official should have known…

Repost from the Sacramento Bee – Capitol Alert

California energy official says state wasn’t aware of crude by rail facilities

March 16, 2014

A California Energy Commission official Friday said the agency wasn’t aware that the state had become a destination for crude oil shipments by rail, even though Gov. Jerry Brown‘s budget proposal made note of it two months ago.

The Bee reported in January that the state was already receiving the shipments and expecting more. According to the energy commission’s own numbers, California received nearly 1.2 million barrels of crude oil by rail in December, up from fewer than 100,000 a year earlier.

The Bee identified at least two locations where crude oil was being unloaded from trains, including Richmond and Bakersfield, with several more terminals under development.

But Gordon Schremp, senior fuels specialist at the commission, told CBS San Francisco Friday that “we don’t have any of those facilities operating in California.”

When the TV station showed him video of rail cars of crude oil at the Kinder Morgan facility in Richmond, Schremp modified his statement.

“It’s certainly a recent change that you know, we haven’t been made aware of that,” he told the TV station.

State and local officials across the country have become concerned about the safety of crude shipments by train since a derailment killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July, and leveled the center of the town with explosive force.

Many communities, from Washington state to New York state, have voted to bar the expansion of such operations until their safety is improved. But it’s not clear that those measures have any legal authority, because the job of regulating rail shipments falls to the federal government.

Railroads and the Department of Transportation last month agreed to a series of voluntary safety improvements, but many state and local officials would like to see more swift, decisive actions from the federal government to protect their communities.

Here is the CBS San Francisco report:

PHOTO: In this July 6, 2013 file photo, emergency workers examine the aftermath of a train derailment and fire in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Canada. Forty-seven people were killed. U.S. federal regulators are further tightening testing requirements for companies that transport oil by rail after a spate of explosions caused by crude train derailments in the U.S. and Canada. Associated Press/Ryan Remiorz)

Bakken Shale, Bay Area Refineries, California Energy Commission, California Regulation, Kinder Morgan, Richmond

KPIX Exposé: Crude by Rail already in Bay Area

Repost from CBS San Francisco 5KPIX News

Trains Carrying Fracked Oil Spotted In Bay Area

March 14, 2014 12:24 AM
by Kristin Ayers

RICHMOND (KPIX 5) – We have seen how fracked crude oil can explode when trains derail. And Bay Area residents have made it clear that they don’t want them here and several projects to bring in crude by rail are on hold because of it.

But KPIX 5 discovered it’s already happening, in an operation so hush hush that even the state’s energy commission didn’t know about it.

A unit train, 100 cars long, is designed to deliver 70,000 barrels of crude cross country in one single run. It’s the same kind of train that derailed and exploded in Quebec, and the same kind of train that Bay Area residents have been fighting to keep out of their towns.

So what is the train doing in a rail yard in Richmond? “I was very surprised,” said energy consultant Ian Goodman.

Goodman found out about it in an investor publication for Kinder Morgan. The energy company operates pipelines and terminals across the U.S.

“They were very proud of the fact that they were the only unit train terminal to unload crude in California,” he told KPIX 5. “My impression was there were no existing unit train unloading facilities in California.”

That’s apparently what state officials thought too. “At this point we don’t have any of those facilities operating in California,” said Gordon Schremp with the California Energy Commission.

After KPIX 5 showed him our video Schremp revised that. “It’s certainly a recent change that you know, we haven’t been made aware of that,” he said.

He said Kinder Morgan’s Richmond terminal has been receiving ethanol on 100 car trains for years. But what about receiving explosive Bakken crude?

KPIX 5 asked Schremp: “Is that something that maybe should be monitored? Put out to the public, so that people are aware that this is running through that area?”

“Well I think it would depend. If the crude oil is just in rail cars and is just temporarily stored there in rail cars, then there should be no need to do an Environmental Impact Report,” he said.

But our camera captured much more than that. After talking to the state, we went back to Richmond and saw this: Bakken crude oil getting unloaded from the train cars onto tanker trucks.

KPIX 5 followed one of those tanker trucks to the Tesoro refinery in Martinez.

So we wondered, where’s the Environmental Impact Report (EIR)?

“Our agency would not necessarily require an EIR to be done,” said Jim Karas at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Karas said Kinder Morgan just applied for a change of use, because their terminal is already set up to receive ethanol trains.

So even though it’s now Bakken crude, key agencies involved don’t seem to care. “This would not be something that would be a significant concern to us,” said Karas.

KPIX 5 called the city of Richmond to see if they approved the project. They said Kinder Morgan leases the rail yard from Burlington Northern Railroad, which is under federal jurisdiction. Bottom line they said they have no control.

Kinder Morgan confirms it is receiving the trains and is in compliance with air quality district permits. In a statement to KPIX they said : “Kinder Morgan is committed to public safety, protection of the environment and operation of our facilities in compliance with all applicable rules and regulations. It is our goal to work openly and cooperatively with all stakeholders regarding environmental, health and safety (EH&S) issues. Among other related EH&S programs, policies and procedures (including annual EPA compliance and ethics training for employees) to help us achieve that goal, we integrate Kinder Morgan EH&S employees into each business unit, where they actively participate in the overall operating success of the organization.”