Category Archives: Santa Maria Refinery

Bay Area, Oil Industry, Rail industry, Santa Maria Refinery

Southern California refinery plan to affect SF Bay Area

Repost from The Los Angeles Times

Phillips 66 plans to build San Luis Obispo County rail terminal

The terminal would send trains with up to 80 tank cars of crude oil through Southern California and the Bay Area to Phillips’ Santa Maria Refinery.
November 26, 2013 | By Ralph Vartabedian

Phillips 66, which operates refineries across California, is moving forward with a plan to build a rail terminal in San Luis Obispo County that would send trains with up to 80 tank cars of crude oil through Southern California and the Bay Area.

In a draft environmental impact statement filed this week, Phillips said it wants to build five sets of parallel tracks that would accommodate trains as often as 250 times per year at its Santa Maria Refinery.

The project is the latest effort by the refinery industry to increase crude imports to California from oil fields in North Dakota, Colorado and Texas. There are no pipelines that can transport large amounts of oil to the West Coast.

Earlier, Valero Energy Corp. disclosed a plan to build a rail facility at its refinery in the Bay Area, and industry analysts expect that an oil rail facility will be built somewhere in the Central Valley.

While the amount of crude moving by rail throughout North America has been on a sharp rise over the last five years, the trend had not attracted a great of public attention until this summer, when a runaway train with 70 tank cars full of crude derailed in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 42 residents and destroying much of the downtown.

Since then, two other derailments of crude trains have occurred, and the Federal Railroad Administration issued an emergency order to improve safety. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, an agency of the U.S. Transportation Department, has taken initial steps to strengthen tank car safety.

More than 200,000 barrels a month of crude have been imported into California by rail as recently as this summer, a fourfold increase from the prior year.

Until now, California has gotten most of its crude from Alaska or foreign nations via tanker ships, or from the state’s own oil patches via a network of pipelines.

Dean Acosta, a Phillips 66 spokesman, said the project will “enable rail delivery of crude oil from other North American sources because the refinery’s traditional supply of crude oil from California fields is declining.”

The new Philips terminal, located 21/4 miles from the Pacific Ocean near the town of Nipomo, would be connected to Union Pacific’s coastal line that runs from downtown Los Angeles north to the Bay Area.

A Union Pacific spokesman said its transportation of crude would meet federal laws and industry standards.

The environmental impact statement indicates that the mostly likely source of crude for the rail terminal would be North Dakota’s Bakken Field, suggesting that more trains would run southbound from the Bay Area than northbound from Los Angeles.

Phillips is also seeking approval to increase the output of the Santa Maria Refinery by 10%, which is under review by the California Coastal Commission. The plant sends partially refined oil to one of Phillips’ main refineries in the Bay Area by a 200-mile pipeline.

The impact statement acknowledges some safety and environmental issues with the new rail facility.

“The main hazards associated with the Rail Spur Project are potential accidents at the [Santa Maria Refinery] and along the [Union Pacific] mainline that could result in oil spills, fires and explosions,” the report said.

But it added that an analysis of the risks of a fire or explosion along the railroad’s main line found the risk to be “less than significant.”

“Our new crude-by-rail fleet is constructed to meet or exceed the latest Assn. of American Railroads safety standards,” Phillips spokesman Acosta said.

The report also found the crude trains would increase air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides. “Operational pollutant emissions within San Luis Obispo County could be potentially significant and unavoidable,” it said.

Murray Wilson, a San Luis Obispo planning department official, said the project has received both local support and opposition. The extent of public opinion should become clearer during the 60-day public comment period that opened this week.

Bakken Shale, Bay Area Refineries, Berkeley, DOT-111, Environmental Impacts, Kinder Morgan, Local Regulation, Oil Industry, Rail accidents, Rail industry, Richmond, Santa Maria Refinery, Tar sands crude

East Bay Express: Richmond and Berkeley oppose oil by rail

1 Comment

Repost from East Bay Express

Richmond and Berkeley Oppose Fracked Oil and Tar Sands Rail Shipments

Jean Tepperman —  Wed, Mar 26, 2014

The city councils of both Berkeley and Richmond unanimously passed resolutions last night calling for tighter regulation of the shipping of crude oil by rail through the East Bay. The Berkeley resolution went further, committing Berkeley to oppose all shipment of crude oil by rail through the city until tighter regulations are in place.

Information has recently come to light about crude-by-rail activity in both cities. In September, with no public announcement, the Kinder Morgan rail yard in Richmond quietly switched from handling ethanol to crude oil. And a new proposal calls for shipping crude oil to the Phillips 66 refinery in Santa Maria on train tracks that run through the East Bay.

Fracked oil from Bakken shale is highly explosive.
USGS – Fracked oil from Bakken shale is highly explosive.

At the Richmond City Council meeting, oil-industry expert Antonia Juhasz presented evidence from both the BNSF railroad and Kinder Morgan websites showing that the crude oil coming into the Richmond rail yard is fracked from the Bakken shale fields in North Dakota. This Bakken crude has been responsible for several recent disastrous explosions when trains carrying it have derailed, with the worst accident in Lac Megantic, Quebec, where 47 people were killed and the downtown destroyed.

Juhasz added that there were more derailments and accidents involving crude by rail in 2013 than in the previous thirty years combined. More crude is being shipped by rail because of the huge increase in production of crude from North Dakota Bakken shale and Canadian tar sands, both far inland, and the need to get the fossil fuel to the coasts to refine and export.

Juhasz also reported that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has said that emergency response planning along the rail routes is “practically nonexistent” and that current regulations are “no longer sufficient” — and that it’s not safe to carry crude oil in the type of car currently being used. Because of all this, the NTSB has recommended that trains carrying crude oil be rerouted “away from populated and other sensitive areas.”

Several Richmond council members and community speakers expressed surprise that the switch to crude oil happened with no public notice. Andres Soto of Communities for a Better Environment said the “real culprit” was the staff of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which approved Kinder Morgan’s application to make this change without notifying the public or even the air district board members.

City councilmembers wrestled with the fact that the city has no jurisdiction over railroads — only the federal government can regulate them. But Juhasz and McLaughlin said a resolution by the city was important as part of a demand from many cities and organizations for more regulation of crude by rail.

The resolution called on federal legislators to move quickly to regulate the transportation of the new types of crude oil from Bakken shale and Canadian tar sands. Many speakers argued in favor of a moratorium on shipping crude by rail until adequate regulations were in place.

Meanwhile in Berkeley, another oil-industry expert, environmental engineer Phyllis Fox, described the plan to ship crude oil through the East Bay to Santa Maria — probably through Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland — since these tracks are built to carry heavy trains. She projected a map showing that rail lines in California parallel rivers and go through the most populated areas, so accidents would be “disastrous.”

Information released about the plan doesn’t reveal the source of the crude oil, but Fox said the two main kinds of crude oil being shipped by rail are from Bakken shale — oil that is highly volatile and prone to explosion — and Canadian tar sands — very heavy oil that is especially toxic and difficult to clean up. “One catastrophic event,” Fox said, “could cause irreversible harm.”

Other sources have pointed out that the Phillips 66 refinery in San Luis Obispo County is geared to refining heavy crude oil, so it’s most likely that the crude headed to that plant would come from the Canadian tar sands.

Many speakers in the public comment period supported the resolution, including residents of Crockett/Rodeo and Martinez, who are waging similar battles in their communities. Speakers pointed out a wide range of problems with shipping crude by rail in addition to the immediate danger. In a pre-meeting rally in support of the resolution, Mayor Tom Bates said the issues “go beyond the danger to our community to our whole carbon future. If we don’t get off fossil fuel we’re all doomed.”

The resolution commits Berkeley to file comments opposing crude-by-rail projects in any draft permit-approval process, starting with the Santa Maria project; to file comments opposing new projects in the Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo and the Valero refinery in Benicia; and to support the federal Department of Transportation in creating strict regulation of rail shipments of crude oil. In presenting the resolution, Maio also said Berkeley should form a coalition with other cities fighting crude-by-rail projects.

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.

Bakken Shale, California Regulation, Crude Oil, Oil Industry, Rail industry, Santa Maria Refinery

Phillips 66 Santa Maria: “crude-by-rail strategy3”

Repost from CalCoastNews.com, San Luis Obispo County

Phillips 66 rail project – explosive risks far outweigh the benefits

March 24, 2014
OPINION By MESA REFINERY WATCH
GROUP CHAIR PERSON LINDA REYNOLDS

rail oil

In 1955, San Luis Obispo County approved a plan to bring crude oil to its Nipomo Mesa Santa Maria Refinery via pipeline. Over the years, the Nipomo refinery was operated by Conoco Phillips, without issue, under agreed-upon limitations and protections.

In 2012, Conoco Phillips spun off Phillips 66 as a separate company. On the cover of its very first annual report, that new company’s executives stated “We’re taking a classic in a new direction.” That direction has become painfully evident with the company’s proposed “rail terminal project” for the refinery in Nipomo, which, as far as its impact on SLO County, would be a dramatic transformation in Phillips’ business model and method of operation.

Their revamped corporate business model is to maximize profits by turning our nation’s rail lines into inherently unsafe “tank car pipelines” to take advantage of the new flood of lower-cost Canadian tar sands 1 and domestic fracked crude oils.

The scope of what Phillips intends:

And that’s the strategy Phillips intends to implement at their Nipomo refinery. Instead of bringing in crude by pipeline, they propose bringing in a half-billion gallons (488,000,000) of crude per year, via 20,800 rail tank cars. In addition, those cars may very well contain Bakken crude — the explosive crude that has destroyed lives, property and the environment in towns across the U.S. and Canada. Phillips has repeatedly refused to rule out the delivery of Bakken crude to its Nipomo refinery.

Plus, the crude would travel through SLO County via DOT-111 cars — tankers that federal officials have called “tragically flawed, causing potential damage and catastrophic loss of hazardous materials during derailments.”2

We suggest you view the devastating impact these trains have already had on communities. Go to this site – http://tinyurl.com/mmbotzu.

The mile-long trains would move from north to south through SLO County. Here are just some locations where citizens could almost reach out and touch the tank cars, and the approximate distances:

• The Fairgrounds in Paso Robles (500 feet).

• Paso Robles’ downtown City Park (500 feet).

• Templeton Park (1,000 feet).

• The Santa Margarita elementary school (500 feet).

• Cal Poly (across the street).

• SLO City Hall (2,000 feet).

• French Hospital (right next door).

• SLO County regional airport (3,000 feet).

• SLO’s Los Ranchos elementary school (in their backyard)

• Pismo Beach Premium Outlets (2,000 feet).

• Pismo Beach’s downtown restaurants (1,400 feet).

• Pismo Beach North Beach Campground (1,000 feet)

• Pismo Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove (across the street)

• Grover Beach’s busy junction of Highway 1 and Grand Ave. (right next door)

• Oceano Beach’s busy junction of Highway 1 and Pier Ave. (right next door)

• Arroyo Grande’s Lopez High School (1,300 feet)

We believe the vastly increased risks that this proposal brings to the citizens and businesses throughout SLO County and the Central Coast are unacceptable. The risks of massive explosions, fires, oil spills, and air, noise, odor and light pollution, enormously outweigh the benefits the plan bestows on an individual business entity — that is, Phillips 66. Any honest risk, benefit analysis would lead to that conclusion.

It’s not about “jobs,” it’s about implementing a crude-by-rail strategy:

Phillips is holding the specter of lost jobs (they employ 140 people) over the heads of the citizens and officials of SLO County, should the Nipomo rail terminal project be denied. Let’s look at the issues:

• Phillips has said they require the project because California crude oil sources to feed their pipeline have been in decline for more than 20 years, since 1987. This time-span was stated by Phillips at the February 24th South County Advisory Council meeting, so they’ve known about the decline for more than two decades.

• Yet, around 2009, Phillips applied for a 10 percent increase in production at their Nipomo refinery, all to be brought in via pipeline. So why, if they knew for two decades that there was a decline in their raw material, would they recently apply for an increase in production, specifically from pipeline sources?

• The reason — the entire “declining California crude” argument, accompanied by the potential loss of jobs, is a red herring. It’s designed to distract us from the real reason they have for bringing in crude oil by rail.

• In fact, while California crude oil production has declined somewhat as a source for their refinery, the amount of crude processed at Nipomo in 2012 was exactly the same as it was 10 years prior in 2003, and it all continued to come in via pipeline. In addition, applications now abound in SLO County for new crude oil drilling sites.

• The real reason for requesting a Nipomo RAIL terminal, is that Phillips “corporate” has changed their business model. And their executives have proudly called it their “crude-by-rail strategy 3.” Their desire is to take advantage of low-cost, high-profit, extremely volatile, fracked shale oil. And the only way to quickly implement it all is via “crude-by-rail.”

Our health and safety trumps Phillips’ new business model:

Phillips wants to introduce a “new normal” into SLO County. That new normal includes potential explosions, fires, pollution and health hazards that do not currently exist here.

If a company that had never conducted business in SLO County came to the supervisors and planning commissioners tomorrow, with the same new business model and associated risks, we’re certain it would be rejected. The safety and well-being of our citizens trumps the new direction in which Phillips intends to take us all. That’s why our planning commissioners must vote “no project.”

1 – http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23366256/canadian-tar-sands-crude-heads-bay-area-refineries

2 – http://www.schumer.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=345384&

3 –Phillips 66 2012 Summary Annual Report; page 27