06-17-09 by dugan
Chevron’s evasions about its "upgrade" of a Northern California refinery to process dirtier, heavier oil got in well-deserved trouble with a state judge recently, thanks to unrelenting pressure from people who live near its already-dirty Richmond refinery (see poster below). Areas with less-organized citizens–including rural Mississippi (a project recently delayed for a year due to cost) and northern South Dakota–risk being mowed down by the oil industry’s shift to tar-like heavy oil, for instance from Canadian tar sands.
The California judge last week rejected Chevron’s environmental impact review for the Richmond, CA, refinery expansion, saying that:
Chevron … failed to meet a fundamental
requirement of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). … Crucially, the judge ruled, the EIR “is unclear and
inconsistent as to whether the project will or will not enable Chevron
to process a heavier crude slate than it is currently processing.”Heavier oils can produce larger emissions of greenhouse gases
than the lighter “sweet” crudes, and the oil company did acknowledge
the refinery might be processing oils with a higher sulfur content.The city was at fault, Judge Zuniga ruled, by failing to
state how the refinery would meet the city’s goal of requiring no net
increase in greenhouse gas emissions and “by simply requiring Chevron
to prepare a mitigation plan and submit it to city staff up to a year
after approval of the conditional use permit” allowing construction to
begin.
In other words, city officials were about to let Chevron build what it wanted, and wait a year to even tell the city what it would do about higher pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
In Richmond, Chevron has employed a tactic called ""piece-mealing"–diguising the upgrades in smaller, separate projects–to avoid full compliance with the Clean Air Act. the law requires that at the time of a major upgrade, refineries must clean up all of their emissions with the latest technology (which, of couse, costs money). By concealing the extent of an upgrade, refiners avoid the Environmental Protection Agency’s so-called new source review requirement.
When the oil industry complains about opposition to refinery upgrades and expansions, its own deception and evasion is the real cause.
It’s particularly worth thinking about because of the industry’s major new interest in thick, dirty heavy oils. From Oil and Gas Journal:
Currently disclosed project costs reveal that pipeline companies and US
refiners plan to invest more than $31 billion by 2015 to export and
distribute oil sands products as well as process them in the US
refining system. This figure excludes any investments in internal
pipelines in Alberta, the Canadian refining and upgrading system, and
undisclosed refining investments.
The dirtiest versions come from tar sands and South American, particularly Venezuela. Sure, it can be refined into ordinary gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil that meets federal standards. But the dirt has to go somewhere, and a good portion of it goes up the smokestack
The industry pooh-poohs its critics by declaring that refineries switching to heavy oil stil have to comply with air quality regulations. This statement on the the Western States Petroleum Association website is typical:
The assertion that
increased refining of higher sulfur crude oil results in increased
ground, air and water pollution is inaccurate. California refineries operate under
very strict regulations that protect the air, water and ground from
contamination. Those requirements do not change based on the sulfur
content of the crude oil being refined. It is inaccurate to claim that
higher sulfur crude oil results in increased pollution.
Here’s a huge loophole in that kind of statement, as noted in a Sierra Club report on South Dakota’s planned Hyperion heavy oil refinery:
Refineries report their own emissions to the EPA, leading many to doubt the accuracy of EPA data.
In a Texas study done in 2000, researchers noted that actual "VOC/NOx [volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide] ratios were consistently 3-10 times higher that reported emissions" Another study done in 2006 "indicated that VOC emissions were 10-40 times higher than reported" by the refineries. (Houston Advanced Research Center, presentation by Alex Cuclis, July 17, 2007
"No studies have ever measured emissions to be less that reported" by the refineries.
Also a report by the House Government Reform Committee found that oil refineries "vastly under-report leaks from valves" and these fugitive emissions "could be eliminated if refineries complied with the requirements of the Clean Air Act."
So much for regulation.
The federal EPA also criticized the state of South Dakota for issuing the Hyperion refinery an air quality permit, because the plant operator’s stated figures for regulated pollutant emissions were unsourced and unsupported, and the permit application didn’t even list or estimate unregulated emissions. So that’s another loophole–pull a fast one on weak state and local regulators.
Don’t buy the argument that oil from tar sands is a necessary component
of national security, and cheaper than renewable energy. When it comes
to what it does to the air, heavy oil is the most expensive fuel next
to coal. And industry self-regulation and self-reporting are a pathetic joke.