Category Archives: Valero Benicia Refinery

Air Quality, Benicia Climate Action Plan, California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Cap-and-trade, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Greenhouse gas emissions, Oil spill, Rail accidents, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail, Valero Energy Corporation

VALLEJO TIMES-HERALD LETTER: Valero is NOT good neighbor!

Repost from the Vallejo Times-Herald

Valero is NOT a good neighbor!

By Rebekah Ramos, September 25, 2015

Valero’s self-proclaimed “Good Neighbor” status is laughable when you begin to peel back the onion and remove the layers of misinformation (or missing information) and reveal the same flavor of corporate propaganda and fearmongering that is used to hold small communities hostage.

There are hidden costs to having Valero as a neighbor that you may not be aware of.

Valero says the City of Benicia is losing more than $360K per year in revenue because of delays in approving their crude by rail project, which could get us 4 new police officers.

Valero DOESN’T say…

    • CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) is a law that requires due diligence to properly evaluate environmental impacts and most importantly, inform the public of those impacts. City staff initially attempted to push this project through, under the radar, and without LITTLE public notification – skirting the law. Had it not been for a group of alert citizens bringing this to the public’s attention Valero would have gotten away with implementing a project that would have enormous ramifications to our health, safety, and economic viability, not only in our community, but every community along the rails.
    • Our personal safety is NOT at risk because we are short on police officers, it’s at risk because transporting highly volatile crude oil by rail is extremely risky business. More than 17 major oil train accidents have occurred in the last 24 months resulting in explosions, spills, and derailments.

Valero says they contribute 25% to Benicia’s general fund.

Valero DOESN’T say…

  • That number is actually 20% AND it doesn’t reflect the millions that Valero has taken away from the city’s coffers in recent years.
  • The City of Benicia was forced to pay Valero $2.3 million because Valero filed an appeal for a reduction in its property value from $1.02 billion to $230 million and $964 million to $100 million in 2012 and 2013 respectively despite climbing profits and gas prices since 2010. Benicia loses $2.3 million AND any on-going revenue generated from Valero’s property taxes. How many police officers do you think $2.3 million get us?

Valero says the crude by rail project will reduce air emissions and decrease greenhouse gases. In addition, they say they are entitled to $57million in emission reduction credits because of improvements made to the refinery.

Valero DOESN’T say…

  • The recirculated EIR for their crude by rail project specifically states that there will be significant increases in air emissions and greenhouse gases.
  • Valero has received dozens of notices of emissions violations nearly every single month of 2014 and 2015 including a violation for Benzene.
  • Valero has failed to install any publically accessible emissions monitoring equipment despite their pledge to do so since 2008.
  • Emission reduction credits would allow Valero to increase their emissions for new projects, sell or trade their credits to other polluters. Because of Cap and Trade legislation, big polluters in our own backyards get to pollute even more.
  • According to the EPA, Valero is the biggest polluter in Solano County, contributing 82% of all toxic releases in 2013. Data for 2014 and 15 is not available.

Valero is desperate to turn a profit and will use whatever means is necessary – squeeze money from the city coffers, pollute our environment, and put our lives at risk – to satisfy the short-term interests of their shareholders. They even threaten to lay people off or sell the refinery if the city doesn’t comply.

We can’t let one business keep our community in such an economically vulnerable situation. The City of Benicia has adopted a Climate Action Plan, but can’t seem to address THE REAL CLIMATE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, which is Valero. It’s time that serious action be taken to seek out and invite other, more sustainable industries to our city because Valero is NOT a Good Neighbor!

Air Quality, Bakken Crude, Benicia CA, Climate Change, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire, Tar sands crude, Uprail communities, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

BENICIA HERALD LETTER: Too many ‘hitches’ to crude by rail

Repost from the Benicia Herald
[Editor:  No link is provided for this letter because the Benicia Herald does not publish Letters in its online edition. – RS]

Too many ‘hitches’ to crude by rail

By Jan Cox-Golovich, September 9, 2015, Benicia Herald

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” – John Muir

And so it is with the Valero Crude-by-Rail Project.  When it was first presented to the community two years ago, we were told that is would be a simple railway expansion without any environmental impacts at all; that was simply untrue. We quickly discovered that this project would have profound effects locally, regionally, nationally and world-wide.

Our local economy has been “hitched” to the refinery for 50 years;  this 19th century industry is becoming obsolete in a state moving towards reducing greenhouse gases by 80% in 2050, while government and market forces transition to clean energy.  California is suffering from the most devastating drought in its history and the refinery uses almost half of our water.  The drought has been exacerbated by the hottest year on record, which in turn has been exacerbated by climate change, which in turn is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.   This “hitches” back to the refinery where 600 “other” businesses in the Industrial Park will, on a good day, experience transportation woes and worsening air quality because of the daily oil deliveries and — on a bad day — will be risking everything by virtue of being in the oil blast zone.

The Crude By Rail project is “hitched” to 1,700 miles of antiquated, dilapidated rail line, moving hazardous cargo from Canadian tar sands and North Dakota Bakken fracked oil fields to the Valero refinery, exposing millions to the dangers of explosions, fires, derailments, spills and permanent environmental damage to their land, water and air.  Many up-rail folks have made the trek down to City Hall to beg us not to do this to them.  This is an ethical “hitch” that we cannot deny or justify.

On a global scale, this project is “hitched” to the utter destruction of the boreal forest in Alberta and the fracking process ravaging North Dakota, where foul-smelling wastewater ponds are threatening agricultural land, animals, the water supply and human health, and where toxic methane gas flares light up the night sky as bright as any American city on the Google night map.  Scientists say the continued extraction of these extreme fuels is “game over” for the planet and human life upon it.   The Pope’s recent encyclical has “hitched” climate change to a moral imperative:  trade in our short-sighted greed for an alternative path to save our children and life on earth.

John Muir, naturalist, visionary and Martinez neighbor, spoke words that resonate with us today.  Benicia is “hitched” to the rest of the world.  We don’t live in a bubble where a town of 28,000 people can make decisions based on short-term financial gain at the expense of endangering human lives or contributing to the destruction of forests, waterways and the atmosphere, just because they are out of our sight.  Our provincial days are over; time for Benicia to reject crude by rail.

Jan Cox Golovich
Former City Councilmember
Bakken Crude, Enbridge, North American light crude oils, Tar sands crude, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Energy Corporation

Valero will soon have fifth refinery processing 100 percent North American crude

Repost from the San Antonio Business Journal
[Editor: Note brief reference to Valero’s Benicia Refinery at end of this article.   – RS]

Valero will soon have fifth refinery processing 100 percent North American crude

By Sergio Chapa, Sep 11, 2015, 6:44pm CDT
File photo Valero Energy Corporation's Jean Gaulin Refinery in Quebec City
File photo – Valero Energy Corporation’s Jean Gaulin Refinery in Quebec City

San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. is expected to have its fifth refinery capable of processing nothing but North American crude by the end of the year.

Valero (NYSE: VLO) revealed in an investors’ presentation released earlier this week that its Jean Gaulin Refinery in Quebec will be processing 100 percent North American crude oil by the end of the year.

Company figures show that the refinery was 100 percent dependent on foreign crude oil in first quarter 2013, but production from the tar sands region of Canada and the shale plays of the United States has dramatically changed the situation.

The Jean Gaulin Refinery is processing about 80 percent North American-sourced crude oil but will be at 100 percent once a project to modify the Enbridge Line 9B Pipeline is completed in the fourth quarter. The project will reverse the flow of the pipeline to enable oil from the tar sands region of Alberta to flow east to Valero’s refinery in Quebec.

Most refineries were built decades ago and were configured to process to Middle Eastern oil, but Valero spokesman Bill Day told the San Antonio Business Journal that the Jean Gaulin Refinery is lined up to be the fifth of the company’s refinery capable of processing 100 percent North American crude oil.

Day said Valero’s Ardmore, McKee, Memphis and Three Rivers refineries can already process 100 percent North American crude oil, while other plants are processing an increasing amount of North American crude.

The investors presentation shows that Valero is expanding its capacity to process a total of 185,000 barrels per day of light sweet crude from the Eagle Ford and other shale plays at the company’s McKee, Houston and Corpus Christi refineries in Texas.

Day said that the addition of the Keystone XL Pipeline would enable Valero to replace foreign heavy crude with heavy crude from Canada. He also noted that a proposed rail terminal at the company’s Benicia refinery in California, would enable Valero to offset foreign crude brought in by ship with North American crude brought in by rail.

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Bay Area Refineries, Benicia CA, Crude By Rail, Revised Draft EIR (RDEIR), Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

League of Women Voters to host Benicia forum on refinery rules

Repost from the Benicia Herald

Benicia forum on refinery rules set

September 8, 2015 by Nick Sestanovich

Air District to have 2-hour ‘open house’ at Robert Semple Elementary on Sept. 17

Debate over the Valero Crude-by-Rail Project — now well into its third year — intensified last week after the release of the revised Draft Environmental Impact Report. But even as residents, businesses and others in the city continue to pore over that massive document, they will have the opportunity to learn more about newly drafted state rules for refineries at a forum here next week.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District will host a series of open houses at elementary schools in the refinery-heavy nexus of Benicia, Martinez and Richmond this month to present the agency’s four new and amended rules to reduce refinery emissions.

“This is part of an effort to reduce emissions from Bay Area refineries by 20 percent or as much as feasible by 2020,” Air District spokesperson Ralph Borrmann said Friday.

The four rules deal with limiting ammonia from fluid catalytic cracking units; broadening equipment leak standards to include all equipment that handles heavy liquids; reducing sulfur dioxide from coke calcining processes; and regulating cooling towers to reduce emissions of organic compounds, toxics and methane by being able to detect and fix leaks.

“The Air District passed a resolution almost a year ago to develop a strategy to reduce refinery emissions,” Borrmann said. “Bay Area refineries are among the most regulated in the country, if not the world, but these meetings are presenting the public with an ambitious approach to reduce emissions that are part of an aggressive approach to regulate refineries in our area.”

The open houses, Borrmann said, will not be lectures but rather forums for people to discuss and gather information. Tables will be set up with in-house experts so attendees can ask questions about the new rules, he said.

“We hope the communities and other stakeholders will have an opportunity to learn about air quality and have a role in the rule-making process,” he said.

The BAAQMD’s Benicia open house will be from 6-8 p.m. Sept. 17 at Robert Semple Elementary, 2015 East Third St.

The two other open houses will be Sept. 15 from 6-8 p.m. at Las Juntas Elementary School, 4105 Pacheco Blvd., in Martinez; and Sept. 28 from 6-8 p.m. at Lincoln Elementary School, 29 Sixth St., in Richmond.