Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Criminal-investigation-at-Chevron-refinery-3886927.php#ixzz27JORnKeO
Criminal investigation at Richmond Chevron refinery

Jaxon Van Derbeken
Updated 11:29 p.m., Saturday, September 22, 2012
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Criminal-investigation-at-Chevron-refinery-3886927.php

628×471 3.jpg 2

Jack Broadbent, executive director of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, says Chevron was “routing gas through that pipe to the flare that they were not monitoring.” Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle / SF

Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of Chevron after discovering that the company detoured pollutants around monitoring equipment at its Richmond refinery for four years and burned them off into the atmosphere, in possible violation of a federal court order, The Chroniclehas learned.

Air quality officials say Chevron fashioned a pipe inside its refinery that routed hydrocarbon gases around monitoring equipment and allowed them to be burned off without officials knowing about it. Some of the gases escaped into the air, but because the company didn’t record them, investigators have no way of being certain of the level of pollution exposure to thousands of people who live downwind from the plant.

“They were routing gas through that pipe to the flare that they were not monitoring,” said Jack Broadbent, executive director of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, whose inspectors uncovered what Chevron was doing and ordered the bypass pipe removed.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal enforcement unit opened an investigation in early 2012, more than two years after the local inspectors made their discovery, according to air-quality officials and others familiar with the probe. The investigation is still open, and Chevron employees have been interviewed.
Who knew what
Federal criminal investigators are trying to determine who at Chevron was aware of the bypass pipe and whether the company used it intentionally to deceive air-pollution regulators. Chevron says its use was inadvertent and that it estimates that the amount of released sulfur dioxide – one of the major components of flaring gas pollution – was minimal.

In a statement, Chevron said it was informed in March of a federal investigation “that appears to be related to flaring at the Richmond refinery.” It said it was cooperating with the probe.
The chairman of the Bay Area air-quality district’s board, Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, said that if Chevron intended to deceive regulators, its actions raised “extremely serious” questions about the company’s credibility.

“That’s a criminal act, intentionally bypassing the monitoring,” Gioia said. “The rule is designed to reduce flaring, and refineries are supposed have a responsibility to abide by it.”

The criminal probe came to light after The Chronicle obtained citation data from the air-quality district under a state Public Records Act request, following the Aug. 6 fire that destroyed part of the Richmond refinery. The probe is unrelated to that blaze.
Health risks
The federal investigation centers on Chevron’s burning, or flaring, of gases created during the superheating needed to generate fuels from crude oil. Although flaring burns most gases, environmental groups have long maintained that residual gases blowing away from the refinery pose a risk of cancer and respiratory ailments.

Under a 2005 settlement of a lawsuit filed against it by the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming that Chevron violated federal environmental rules, the company agreed to limit flaring at Richmond and its other refineries and account for each flaring event.

The Bay Area air-quality district, which enforces federal air standards, ordered Chevron to install monitors at the Richmond refinery to measure pollutants in the gases burned off during flaring, and to report all instances of flaring.

Spotted by inspectors
Wayne Kino, an enforcement manager for the air-quality district, said two inspectors with the agency became suspicious Aug. 17, 2009, when they saw steam from a flare coming from a high-pressure, high-temperature hydrocracking complex in Richmond called the Isomax unit, where 62,000 barrels of oil a day are converted into gasoline and jet fuel.

The inspectors asked to see Chevron’s pollution-monitoring equipment, and discovered “it wasn’t recording anything,” Kino said.

Chevron had installed more than 100 feet of 3-inch pipe, linking the vessel where oil is processed to the flare tower, and bypassing two sets of monitoring equipment, Kino said. When an operator activated the bypass pipe, the gases were sent up the flare stack without being recorded.

Chevron said the pipe was designed to balance pressure in the refining process, but investigators could find no legitimate use for it, Kino said.
Bypassed 27 times
During a two-year investigation that involved examination of refinery surveillance tapes, Kino said, the air-quality district determined that Chevron used the pipe bypass 27 times from April 2005 to August 2009. He called the violations “very serious.”

In August 2011, Chevron agreed to a settlement with the agency in which it paid a $170,000 fine for two violations. That same month, the air-quality agency renewed Chevron’s permit for operating the Richmond refinery for five years.

In September 2010 – a year into the agency’s investigation – Environmental Protection Agency officials expressed concerns that Chevron was flaring at the Richmond refinery as a matter of routine. The air-quality district, however, dismissed the suggestion.

“There is no evidence that the flares at the Chevron refinery are being used as control devices,” the district said. It cited “flaring reports from this refinery covering the period from 2004 to the present show no instances of ‘routine’ flaring.”

Kino said the agency official who wrote the response hadn’t known about the investigation. He said the federal agency was ultimately notified of the violations in May 2011.

The environmental agency issued a statement saying it “does not comment on ongoing investigations.”
Workers interviewed
Officials of the union that represents workers at the refinery said Chevron employees had been questioned by the environmental agency investigators.

“The union is aware that there is an ongoing investigation,” said Jeff Clark, a field representative with the United Steelworkers Local 5. “Our members have been interviewed as part of it, and we cannot comment further at this time.”

The investigators have also questioned air-quality agency officials about what they knew about the bypass system. Kino said his inspectors have cooperated with the criminal probe.

Gioia, the air-quality board chairman, said he was upset that the agency’s staff didn’t tell him and other district directors about the $170,000 fine before it was issued. The fine was the most Chevron has paid in the past decade for air-quality violations at the Richmond refinery.

“It’s serious under any circumstances for a refinery to bypass the collection monitors,” Gioia said. “It’s a pretty large fine, and that means it’s a large incident.”

He added, “We have gone around as a district declaring that the flare-monitoring rule has been a success and has reduced emissions. But if we are not capturing all the emissions, it’s hard to judge how effective it has been.”

Jaxon Van Derbeken is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.nola.com/sports/index.ssf/2012/09/hurricane_isaac_showed_that_bp.html

Times-Picayune

Published: Sunday, September 23, 2012, 7:53 PM Updated: Sunday, September 23, 2012, 8:56 PM

By Bob Marshall, The Times-Picayune

It’s been three weeks since Hurricane Isaac punched up the region, but a 12-mile section of our coast from Caminada Pass to Pass Fourchon remains closed to fishing — and any other activities.

That’s because clean-up crews are still trying to collect massive mats of weathered oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill the storm unearthed near the shore.

That news reminded me of a story back in May 2010, just weeks into the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The first patches of sticky oil had begun to reach the coast, and the world’s media was flashing pictures of men in hazmat suits scooping the toxic black goo or collecting dead fish and oiled pelicans.

The first paragraph read: “For those saddened by the scenes of thick oil washing into Louisiana’s coastal wetlands a month after the BP oil disaster, experts on oil spills and the coastal ecosystem have some advice: Get used to it.”

One of those experts was Robert Barham, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, a man who has proven not to play politics with the truth when it comes to protecting our natural resources. So while BP was leading a chorus from the oil industry that “we’ll make it right”, Barham gave this blunt assessment:

“I think we’re looking at many months of intense activity, but then years of follow-up work. I’ve been told by the ocean experts this stuff could hang out there on the bottom of the Gulf for more than 100 years. And as long as it’s out there, it can come ashore.

“We might not see big black waves, but we may be seeing a smaller, but serious problem, for years and years to come.”

There was a lot of pushback on those statements from the oil industry and its supporters, many of whom are in state government. Most people remember the odd spectacle of our politicians demanding the coast be repaired at the same time they were throwing President Obama under the bus for his temporary drilling moratorium. They made that timeout for safety sound like a bigger disaster than the spill. You probably remember the claims: economic ruin for the state, a wholesale exodus of drilling rigs from the Gulf.

Well, here we are two years later, and the oil industry now has more rigs drilling in the Gulf than it did before Deepwater Horizon. And oil industry profits continue to be world-wide leaders, high enough that the sector could afford to spend $71.2 million lobbying congress so far this year, adding to the $1.2 billion it has spent since 1998. And its view of Obama’s effort to prevent another disaster can be reflected in its contributions during the presidential campaign: Mitt Romney has received $4.5 million, Obama $1.5 million. (All those figures are from OpenSecrets.org)

But while the oil industry has recovered quickly and quite nicely from the disaster it caused, our coastal wetlands — the ecosystem that makes living here not just enjoyable but possible — still suffers from that assault, as Hurricane Isaac made quite clear.

Barham said the clean-up crews told him the job of collecting this latest wave of BP’s oil would take about a month. Even then, the long stretch of coast valuable to the fishing industry would still not be reopened. It must first pass federal muster.

“The protocol we’ve agreed to with the Food and Drug Administration is that when oil resurfaces in an area, we keep it closed until there are no visible signs of oil left Ñ however long that takes,” Barham said. “During that time, we’re collecting samples of seafood and having (analysis done) on tissue to check for any contamination.

“There’s never been any sign of (contamination causing) human health issues, and we don’t expect any.”

Of course, Barham knows better than most that this isn’t the last time he’ll be explaining the protocol.

The lesson of this episode: If the local fishing industry — including commercial seafood dealers having trouble getting America to accept the safety of their products — are shocked at the site of more oil from that one spill still popping up, causing closures and generating negative headlines around the nation, experts on oil spills and the coastal ecosystem have some advice: Get used to it.

Oil spills may result in only temporary disruption to the company and industries that cause them, but they are permanent injuries for the rest of us.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

The Costs of Fracking (Maryland)

Date: September 7, 2012 11:23:44 AM EDT

By Wendy Williams

As the fall begins, BP’s unconscionable Deep Water oil spill is making news again. The federal government is moving its case forward by claiming the British oil giant is guilty of negligence and perhaps even willful misconduct.

These are strong words.

But perhaps even more important to those of us who care about healthy oceans is the fact that the wind and waves from the recent Gulf hurricane Isaac have churned up shorelines and uncovered BP oil that’s laid buried for many months.

This newly uncovered oil may be every bit as toxic as when it was first released in 2010. Normally, energy from the sun and other sources helps to break the bonds in the oil and decrease toxicity. But if the oil has been encased in layers of mud and detritus, it may be as fresh as when it was first released.

Until scientists study this oil, no one will know for sure how dangerous it is.

I started following the story of toxicity and oil degradation in 2002, when I wrote about a dynamic young marine chemist, Chris Reddy of Woods Hole Oceanographic, who had found still-highly-toxic oil buried in a once-productive salt marsh on Cape Cod.

The oil had come from a barge that more than 30 years earlier leaked about 600 metric tons of oil into Cape Cod’s Buzzards Bay. High winds and waves washed the oil into the salt marsh, where it was eventually covered over with protective layers of marsh mud and debris. Because the sun was not hitting the oil, there was no energy to break up the bonds that held the various compounds in the oil together.

So when Chris found the oil 30 years later, he also found that the substances had not degraded. Toxicity levels remained high.

Chris’s research made worldwide headlines. Chris’s study had widespread legal implications because lawyers for Exxon were claiming that the oil spilled from the 1989 Valdez in Alaska would degrade over time. Chris’s findings contradicted the lawyers’ claims and had implications that could have affected the final dollars amounts the oil company had to pay in compensation.

Chris and I stay in touch from time to time, and so I knew that in 2010, when the BP disaster occurred, Chris was one of many talented, committed and dynamic scientists who headed to the Gulf as quickly as possible.

He hoped to capture some of the exuded oil as close to its source as possible, in order to ascertain its “signature” – its profile of chemical compounds – as thoroughly as possible before the process of degradation began.

By doing this, Chris and others would be able to track the movements of this particular batch of oil and to differentiate this oil from other oil that may already have been present in the ocean or along the shorelines.

Ultimately, the scientists produced a report that estimated the amount of oil that had been spilled. Their third-party estimates turned out to be much higher than the estimates supplied by BP scientists.

That figure has important legal implications.

This past summer, BP subpoenaed roughly 3,000 private emails of Reddy and his research partner Richard Camilli, also of WHOI.

BP lawyers may try to use the information in these emails, which discuss various aspects of their research, to discredit their findings and thus reduce the amount of money the corporation may ultimately have to pay out.

Here’s the rub: These scientists are not part of any legal suit. Financially, they have no dog in this fight. They are neutral parties who are doing what scientists are supposed to do – supply data.

Nevertheless, they are now required to have their own attorneys to deal with BP’s demands (the company originally asked for many, many more of the scientists’ emails) and they are required to cover their own expenses involved with complying with demands from BP attorneys.

Here’s what they wrote in a recent column: “We are accused of no crimes, nor are we party to the lawsuit. We are two scientists at an academic research institution who responded to requests for help from BP and government officials at a time of crisis.”

We need a Good Samaritan Scientist law. Scientists who pitch in to help out – without compensation from the various parties — need to be protected from subsequent harassment.

I’m certainly not the first to suggest this. Many federal officials have talked about the need to protect scientists.

But Washington doesn’t seem to be able to move forward on this legislation.

I’m left to wonder: Is this because the scientists don’t have the kind of money necessary to hire the kind of lobbyists hired by the oil companies?

But I know one thing for sure: This kind of persistent harassment from oil corporations will make future scientists think twice about pitching in and helping out the next time an oil disaster occurs.

Creating this kind of psychological deterrent may not necessarily be BP’s intention – but it could certainly be the ultimate outcome.

Special thanks to Mark J. Spalding, The Ocean Foundation

http://www.adn.com/2012/08/24/2598667/greenpeace-activists-storm-offshore.html

By NATALIYA VASILYEVA
Associated Press
Published: August 24th, 2012 08:32 AM
Last Modified: August 24th, 2012 08:32 AM

MOSCOW – Greenpeace activists were first offered hot soup, then showered with blasts of cold water and pieces of metal after they stormed a floating Russia oil platform and erected climbing tents on the side of the rig Friday to protest drilling in the Arctic.

The six activists, who include Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo, spent several hours hanging off the side of the Prirazlomnaya platform in the Pechora Sea attached to the rig’s mooring lines. They prepared for a long occupation by bringing up supplies, including the tents, but planned to evacuate after rig workers threw pieces of metal at them.

“Not just hosed water, but now metal being thrown by Gazprom crew at our activists,” he said in a tweet, referring to the workers of a subsidiary of Russian energy company Gazprom that owns and operates the rig. “We’re coming down.”

Gazprom officials were not immediately available for comment. Initially, two helicopters arrived at the platform, but left without disturbing the protesters. The activists managed to put a banner on the rig saying “Don’t kill the Arctic.”

“We’re here peacefully and we will continue to draw the attention of Russian people and people around the world to what’s happening there,” Naidoo told The Associated Press by telephone from the platform before planning to evacuate. “It’s bad for Russia, it’s bad for the planet.”

Gazprom is pioneering Russia’s oil drilling in the Arctic. The state-owned company installed the platform there last year and is preparing to drill the first well.

At first, crew members were friendly and offered them soup, said Naidoo, who was also able to tweet while still suspended from the rig. “Gazprom crew told to make life difficult; regular blasts of icy water,” one tweet said. An accompanying photo showed a stream of water hitting two of the activists. Another tweet said he didn’t expect police or coast guard units until Saturday.

Naidoo said the air temperature was 48, while the water was 46. Gazprom told the AP in an emailed statement that the activists “have been invited to scale up to the platform for a constructive dialogue,” but said that they refused. The company said that “all work on the platform proceeds as normal.”

Naidoo, a South African, said the five activists with him include two from Germany, and one each from the United States, Canada and Finland. The platform is about 620 miles from the nearest port, Murmansk, a city on the extreme northwestern edge of the Russian mainland.

Greenpeace said that its activists have supplies to last “for an extended stay.” Russian and international environmentalists have warned that drilling in the Russian Arctic could have disastrous consequences because of a lack of technology and infrastructure to deal with a possible spill in a remote region known for huge icebergs and severe storms.

An AP investigation last year found that at least 1 percent of Russia’s annual oil production, or 5 million tons, is spilled every year.

Special thanks to Richard Charter