The price of doing business: 4 billion dollars for collateral damage/human death/environmental spills.
By Mathew Brown and Josh Funk of the Associated Press
https://mail.google.com/mail/?tab=wm#sent/1401abcb8eb105a4
Editorial note: For those of you who are counting, in February 2015 there were 6 derailments between the US and Canada. Of those 6 derailments, 2 trains were carrying fuel. They exploded and contaminated adjacent waterways.
Ash rains down from the sky; Children in 14 nearby school shelter in place.
Editorial note: Jay Gunkleman has advised us that the catalytic cracker unit (which was new) was the source of the explosion. The catalyst is likely a metal like Vanadium, and the chemistry is likely alkaline, similar to the CataCarb release from Rodeo’s refinery in the 1990s at then Unocal (now P66), where the catalyst was full of Boron, vanadium and “secret ingredients” they never did disclose. The LA neighborhood (Torrance/Compton) has ash deposited following the explosion/fire… as well as the refinery itself…. likely not healthy for dermal or respiratory exposure, much like Crockett had following the release locally. It will be interesting to track the details of this refinery explosion and the local impacts. At the very least, ash samples should be tested for metals and acidity/alkalinity
Here are two links to the story:
By Veronica Rocha and Rueben Vives (L.A. Times, February 18, 2015)
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-explosion-exxon-torrance-refinery-20150218-story.html
By Tami Abdollah (Associated Press, February 18, 2015):
All of the oil tank cars on the 109-car train were CPC 1232 models. Newer. Tougher.
Apparently not.. The rapid uptick in crude-by-rail accidents are the product of a 40-fold increase in crude-by-rail shipments since 2008.
Reprint from Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/17/us-usa-train-derailment-csx-idUSKBN0LK1ST20150217
Tankers fall into river. State of Emergency called by the Governor.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-train-derailment-west-virginia-20150216-story.html
This is the second derailment on one week. The other one was in Ontario, Canada:
Appellants have 30 days to sue to win safety concessions for both workers and the community and to get the refinery to run a cleaner operation
Pictured above: Greg Karras of Communities for a Better Environment, waits his turn to speak. (Photo Credit: Dan Honda, Bay Area News Group.)
A quick synopsis: The Co. Co. County Board of Supervisors brushed past many fatal flaws in the Rodeo P66 EIR. Just for starters: the EIR refused to admit that the Propane Expansion Project was, in truth, a Canadian Tar Sands Project (and thus, would create tremendous amounts of local pollution and endanger both worker and community safety as currently designed.)
But the P66 EIR for the Nipomo/Santa Maria refinery in San Louis Obispo County spelled it out in black and white: Canadian Tar Sands will come to P66 in San Louis Obispo County by barge. Then after being slightly refined, the crude will be shot up through the pipeline directly into the P66 coker unit in Rodeo. The rest will barrel up California in rolling bomb trains on a train track ….near you.
For a CRUDE’S more lengthy analysis of the rather surreal hearing: https://crockett-rodeo-united.com/p66-propane-project/
Two reporters were present at the hearing. Here are their takes:
Jean Tepperman, East Bay Express February 5, 2015
Tom Lochner, Contra Costa Times February 4, 2015
Editor’s note: If you think ConocoPhillips treats people in Rodeo and Crockett like dirt, wait until you read how they treat ranchers up in the Bakken Crude territory of North Dakota.
By Deborah Sontag, New York Times (November 23, 2014)
By Mitchell Anderson, ipolitics.com
Norway gets $46.20 in royalties per barrel vs $4.04 in Alberta.
“Even if oil was worth nothing tomorrow, the country would still have no public debt, fully funded social programs that we can only dream of, and a very large nest egg to transition to a new economy.”
So why on earth would Contra Costa County follow Alberta’s example…and not Norway’s?
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2015/01/23/the-bloom-is-off-the-boom-how-alberta-blew-it/
Thousands of Californians from across the state are gathering in Governor Jerry Brown’s longtime home of Oakland to say that we need real climate leadership.
Across the state wells are drying up, more than a dozen cities are in real danger of running out of water, & there’s no question it’s being made worse by climate change. But instead of reigning in the oil and gas industry & putting an end to incredibly dangerous and water-intensive practices like fracking, Governor Brown has been letting companies continue with business as usual.
Join people from all corners of California this February in telling Governor Brown that if he won’t be a real climate leader, that if he won’t stand up to the fossil fuel industry, then we will. Because this is about our water, our health, & our California.
WHEN: February 07, 2015 at 11am -5pm
Phillip 66 got its property taxes vastly reduced based on claims of lack of profitability as opposed to the actual value of the property (it owns over a third of the property in Rodeo). Setting aside the total lack of transparency of this back room deal, just how does a subsidiary of one of America’s biggest oil extraction and refining companies…cry poor?
Many thanks to Rodeo resident Teagan Clive for presenting her letter to the Board of Supervisors and basically breaking this important news story. The clip of the Ms. Clive’s comments are embeded below in Ed Tannebaum’s fine blog, CRGNA.org
http://crgna.org/blog/2015/01/new-property-tax-base-for-p66/
Crockett-Rodeo United to Defend the Environment 