The City of Arvin, with a population of about 20,000, is located in Kern County, California just 15 miles southeast of Bakersfield. Nicknamed ‘The Garden in the Sun,’ Arvin is moving forward with establishing new regulations that would limit oil and gas development within the city limits.
Setback Map
The new ordinance proposes setback distances for sensitive sites including hospitals and schools, as well as residentially and commercially zoned parcels. The proposal establishes a 300-foot buffer for new development and 600’ for new operations.
In the map below, FracTracker Alliance has mapped out the zoning districts in Arvin and mapped the reach of the buffers around those districts. The areas where oil and gas well permits will be blocked by the ordinance are shown in green, labeled “Buffered Protected Zones.” The “Unprotected Zones” will still allow oil and gas permits for new development.
There are currently 13 producing oil and gas wells within the city limits of Arvin, 11 of them are located in the protected zones. Those within the protected zones are operated by Sun Mountain Oil and Gas and Petro Capital Resources. They were all drilled prior to 1980, and are shown in the map below.
Information on the public hearings and proposals can be found in the Arvin city website, where the city posts public notices. As of January 24, 2018, these are the current documents related to the proposed ordinance that you will find on the webpage:
In December of 2016, Committee for a Better Arvin, Committee for a Better Shafter, and Greenfield Walking Group, represented by Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment, sued Kern County. The lawsuit was filed in coordination with EarthJustice, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Importance of Local Rule
Self-determination by local rule is fundamental of United States democracy, but is often derailed by corporate industry interests by the way of state pre-emption. There is a general understanding that local governments are able to institute policies that protect the interests of their constituents, as long as they do not conflict with the laws of the state or federal government. Typically, local municipalities are able to pass laws that are more constrictive than regional, state, and the federal government.
Unfortunately, when it comes to environmental health regulations, states commonly institute policies that preserve the rights of extractive industries to access mineral resources. In such cases, the state law “pre-empts” the ability of local municipalities to regulate. Local laws can be considered the mandate of the people, rather than the influence of outside interest on representatives. Therefore, when it comes to land use and issues of environmental health, local self-determination must be preserved so that communities are empowered in their decision making to best protect the health of their citizens.
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Arvin_bakersfield_re.jpg400900Kyle Ferrar, MPHhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngKyle Ferrar, MPH2018-01-30 11:59:072021-04-15 15:01:28Arvin, CA – a City in the Most Drilled County in the Country – files for a Setback Ordinance
Air quality in the California Bay Area has been steadily improving over the last decade, and the trend can even be seen over just the course of the last few years. In this article we explore data from the ambient air quality monitoring networks in the Bay Area, including a look at refinery emissions.
From the data and air quality reports we find that that many criteria pollutants such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and oxides of nitrogen (NOX) have decreased dramatically, and areas that were degraded are now in compliance.
While air pollution from certain sectors such as transportation have been decreasing, the north coast of the East Bay region is home to a variety of petrochemical industry sites. This includes five petroleum refineries. The refineries not only contribute to these criteria pollutants, but also emit a unique cocktail of toxic and carcinogenic compounds that are not monitored and continue to impact cardiovascular health in the region. This region, aptly named the “refinery corridor” has a petroleum refining capacity of roughly 800,000 BPD (barrels per day) of crude oil.
Petroleum refineries in California’s East Bay have always been a contentious issue, and several of the refineries date back to almost the turn of the 20th century. The refineries have continuously increased their capacities and abilities to refine dirtier crude oil through “modernization projects.” As a result, air quality and health impacts became such a concern that in 2006 and again in 2012, Gayle McLaughlin, a Green Party candidate, was elected as Mayor of the City of Richmond. Richmond, CA became the largest city in the U.S. with a Green Party Mayor. While there have been many strides in the recent decade to clean up these major sources of air pollution, health impacts in the region including cardiovascular disease and asthma, as well as cancer rates, are still disproportionately high.
Regulations
To give additional background on this issue, let’s discuss some the regulations tasked with protecting people and the environment in California, as well as climate change targets.
However – a current proposal will actually allow the refineries to process more crude oil by setting a standard for emissions by volume of crude/petroleum refined, rather than an actual cap on emissions. The current regulatory approach focuses on “source-by-source” regulations of individual equipment, which ignores the overall picture of what’s spewing into nearby communities and the atmosphere. Even the state air resources board has supported a move to block the refineries from accepting more heavy crude from the Canadian tar sands.
New regulatory proposals incentivize refineries to continue expanding operations to refine more oil, resulting in a larger burden on the health of these already disproportionately impacted environmental justice communities. Chevron, in particular, is upgrading their Richmond refinery in a way as to allow it to process dirtier crude in larger volumes from the Monterey Shale and Canada’s Tar Sands. Since the production volumes of lighter crudes are shrinking, heavier dirtier crudes are becoming a larger part of the refinerys’ feedstocks. Heavier crudes require more energy to refine and result in larger amounts of hazardous emissions.
Upgrades are also being implemented to address greenhouse gas emissions. While the upgrades address the carbon emissions, regulatory standards without strict caps for other pollutants will allow emissions of criteria and toxic air pollutants such as VOC’s, nitrosamines, heavy metals, etc… to increase. In fact, newly proposed emissions standards for refineries will make it easier for the refineries to increase their crude oil volumes by regulating emissions on per-barrel standards. Current refining volumes can be seen below in Table 1, along with their maximum capacity.
Table 1. Bay Area refineries average oil processed and total capacity
Refinery
Location
Ave. oil processed Barrels Per Day (2012 est.)
Max. capacity (BPD)
Chevron U.S.A. Inc. Richmond Refinery
Richmond
245,271
>350,000
Tesoro Refining & Marketing, Golden Eagle Refinery
The Bay Area, and in particular the city of Richmond, have been noted in the literature as a place where environmental racism and environmental health disparity exist. The city’s residents of color disproportionately live near the refineries and chemical plants, which is noted in early works on environmental racism by pioneers of the idea, such as Robert Bullard (Bullard 1993a,b).
Since the issue has been brought to national attention by environmental justice groups like West County Toxics Coalition, progress has been made to try to bring justice, but it has been limited. People of color are still disproportionately exposed to toxic, industrial pollution in that area. A recent study showed 93% of respondents in Richmond were concerned about the link between pollution and health, and 81% were concerned about a specific polluter, mainly the Chevron Refinery (Brody et al. 2012). Recent health reports continue to show the trend that these refinery communities suffer disproportionately from cases of asthma and cardiovascular disease and higher mortality rates from a variety of cancers.
Health Impact Studies
Manufacturing and refining are known to produce particularly toxic pollution. Additionally, there has been research done on the specific makeup of pollution in the refinery corridor. The best study to do this is the Northern California Household Exposure Study (Brody et al. 2009). They examined indoor and outdoor air in Richmond, a refinery corridor community, and Bolinas, a nearby but far more rural community. They found 33% more compounds in Richmond, along with higher concentrations of each compound. The study also found very high concentrations of vanadium and nickel in Richmond, some of the highest levels in the state. Vanadium and nickel have been shown to be some of the most dangerous PM2.5 components as we previously stated, which gives reason to believe the air pollution in Richmond is more toxic than in surrounding areas.
Another very similar study compared the levels of endocrine disrupting compounds in Richmond and Bolinas homes, and found 40 in Richmond homes and only 10 in Bolinas (Rudel et al. 2010). This supports the idea that a large variety of pollutants with synergistic effects may be contributing to the increased mortality and hospital visits for communities in this region. This small body of research on pollution in Richmond suggests that the composition of air pollution may be more toxic and thus trigger more pollution-related adverse health outcomes than in surrounding communities.
Air Quality Monitoring
As discussed above and in FracTracker’s previous reports on the refinery corridor, the refinery emissions are a unique cocktail whose synergistic effects may be driving much of the cardiovascular disease, asthma, and cancer risk in the region. Therefore, the risk drivers in the Bay Area need to be prioritized, in particular the compounds of interest emitted by the petrochemical facilities.
The targets for emissions monitoring are compounds associated with the highest risk in the neighboring communities. An expert panel was convened in 2013 to develop plans for a monitoring network in the refinery corridor. Experts found that measurements should be collected at 5 minute intervals and displayed to the public real-time. The gradient of ambient air concentrations is determined by the distance from refinery, so a network of three near-fence-line monitors was recommended. Major drivers of risk are supposed to be identified by air quality monitoring conducted as a part of Air District Regulation 12m Rule 15: Petroleum Refining Emissions tracking. According to the rule, fence-line monitoring plans by refinery operators:
… must measure benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylenes (BTEX) and HS concentrations at refinery fence-lines with open path technology capable of measuring in the parts per billion range regardless of path length. Open path measurement of SO2, alkanes or other organic compound indicators, 1, 3-butadiene, and ammonia concentrations are to be considered in the Air Monitoring Plan.
The following analysis found that the majority of hazardous pollutants emitted from refineries are not monitored downwind of the facility fence-lines, much less the list explicitly named in the regulations above.
As shown below in Figure 1, the most impacted communities are in those directly downwind of the facility. According to the BAAQMD, each petroleum refinery is supposed to have fence-line monitoring. Despite this regulation developed by air quality and health experts, only two out of the five refineries have even one fence-line monitor. Real-time air monitoring data at the Chevron Richmond fence-line monitor and the Phillips 66 Rodeo fence-line monitor can be found on fenceline.org. Data from these monitors are also aggregated by the U.S. EPA, and along with the other local monitors, can be viewed on the EPA’s interactive mapping platform.
Figure 1. Map of Hydrogen Sulfide Emissions from the Richmond Chevron Refinery
Hazardous Emissions and Ambient Pollution
Since the majority of hazardous chemicals emitted from the refineries are not measured at monitoring sites, or there are not any monitoring sites at the fence-line or downwind of the facility, our mapping exercises instead focus on the hazardous air pollution for which there is data.
As shown in the map of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) above, the communities immediately neighboring the refineries are subjected to the majority of hazardous emissions. The map shows the rapidly decreasing concentration gradient as you get away from the facility. H2S would have been a good signature of refinery emissions throughout the region if there were more than three monitors. Also, those monitors only existed until 2013, when they were replaced with a singular monitor in a much better location, as shown on the map. The 2016 max value is much higher because it is more directly downwind of Chevron Refinery.
The interpolated map layer was created using 2013 monitoring data from three monitors that have since been removed. The 2016 monitoring location is in a different location and has a maximum value more than twice what was recorded at the 2013 location.
Table 2. Inventory of criteria pollutant emissions for the largest sectors in the Bay Area
Annual average tons per day
PM10
PM2.5
ROG
NOX
SOX
CO
Area wide
175.51
52.90
87.95
19.92
0.62
161.86
Mobile
20.33
16.27
183.12
380.52
14.93
1541.50
Total Emissions
16.30
12.14
106.58
50.59
45.95
44.31
Table adapted from the BAAQMD Refinery Report. PM10 = particulate matter less than 10 microns in diameter (about the width of a human hair); PM2.5 = PM less than 2.5 microns in diameter; ROG = reactive organic gases; NOX = nitrogen oxides; SOX = sulfur oxides; CO = carbon monoxide.
Additionally, exposure assessment can also rely on using surrogate emissions to understand where the plumes from the refineries are interacting with the surrounding communities. It is particularly important to also discriminate between different sources of pollution. As we see in Table 2 above, the largest volume of particulate matter (PM), NOX, and CO emissions actually come from mobile sources, whereas the largest source of sulfur dioxide and other oxides (SOX) is from stationary sources. Since the relationship between PM2.5 and health outcomes is most established, the response to ambient levels of PM2.5 in the refinery corridor gives insight into the composition of PM as well as the presence of other species of hazardous air pollution. On the other hand, SO2 can be used as a surrogate for the footprint of un-monitored air toxics.
Pollutants’ Fingerprints
Particulate Matter
Figure 2. Map of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District
Figure 2 above displays ambient levels of PM2.5, and as the map shows, the highest levels of particulate matter surround the larger metro area of downtown Oakland and also track with the larger commuting corridors. The map shows evidence that the largest contributor to PM2.5 is truly the transportation (mobile) sector. PM2.5 is one hazardous air pollutant which negatively impacts health, causing heart attack, or myocardial infarction (MI), among other conditions. PM2.5 is particulate matter pollution, meaning small particles suspended in the air, specifically particles under 2.5 microns in diameter. Exposure to high levels of PM2.5 increases the risk of MI within hours and for the next 1-2 days (Brooks et al. 2004; Poloniecki et al. 1997).While refineries may not be the largest source of PM in the Bay Area, they are still large point sources that contribute to high local conditions of smog.
The chemical make-up of the particulate matter also needs to be considered. In addition, the toxicity of PM from the refineries is of particular concern. Since particulate matter acts like small carbon sponges, the source of PM affects its toxicity. The cocktail of hazardous air toxics emitted by refineries absorb and adsorb to the surfaces of PM. When inhaled with PM, these toxics including heavy metals and carcinogens are delivered deep into lung tissue.
Pooled results of many studies showed that for every 10 micrograms per meter cubed increase in PM2.5 levels, the risk of MI increases 0.4-1% (Brooks et al. 2010). However, this relationship has not been studied in the context of EJ communities. EJ communities are generally low income communities of color (Bullard 1993), which have higher exposures to pollution, more sources of stress, and higher biological markers of stress (Szanton et al. 2010; Carlson and Chamberlein 2005). All of these factors may affect the relationship between PM2.5 and MI, and increase the health impact of pollution in EJ communities relative to what has been found in the literature.
Sulfur Dioxide
Figure 3 below shows the fingerprint of the refinery emissions on the refinery corridor, using SO2 emissions as a surrogate for the cocktail of toxic emissions. The relationship between SO2 and health endpoints of cardiovascular disease and asthma have also been established in the literature (Kaldor et al. 1984).
In addition to assessing SO2 as a direct health stressor, it is also the most effective tracer of industrial emissions and specifically petroleum refineries for a number of reasons. Petroleum refineries are the largest source of SO2 in the BAAQMD by far (Table 1), and there are more monitors for SO2 than any of the other emitted chemical species that can be used to fingerprint the refineries. The distribution of SO2 is therefore representative of the cocktail of a combination of the hazardous chemicals released in refinery emissions.
Figure 3. Map of Sulfur Dioxide for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District
The next step for FracTracker Alliance is to further explore the relationship between health effects in the refinery communities and ambient levels of air pollution emitted by the refineries. Our staff is currently working with the California Department of Public Health to analyze the response of daily emergency room discharges for a variety of health impacts including cardiovascular disease and asthma.
References
Brody, J. G., R. Morello-Frosch, A. Zota, P. Brown, C. Pérez, and R. A. Rudel. 2009. Linking Exposure Assessment Science With Policy Objectives for Environmental Justice and Breast Cancer Advocacy: The Northern California Household Exposure Study. American Journal of Public Health 99:S600–S609.
Brook, R. D., B. Franklin, W. Cascio, Y. Hong, G. Howard, M. Lipsett, R. Luepker, M. Mittleman, J. Samet, S. C. Smith, and I. Tager. 2004. Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease. Circulation 109:2655–2671.
Brooks, R. D., S. Rajagopalan, C. A. Pope, J. R. Brook, A. Bhatnagar, A. V. Diez-Roux, F. Holguin, Y. Hong, R. V. Luepker, M. A. Mittleman, A. Peters, D. Siscovick, S. C. Smith, L. Whitsel, and J. D. Kaufman. 2010. Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease. Circulation 121:2331–2378.
Bullard, R. D. 1993a. Race and Environmental Justice in the United States Symposium: Earth Rights and Responsibilities: Human Rights and Environmental Protection. Yale Journal of International Law 18:319–336.
Bullard, R. D. 1993b. Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots. South End Press.
Carlson, E.D. and Chamberlain, R.M. (2005), Allostatic load and health disparities: A theoretical orientation. Res. Nurs. Health, 28: 306–315. doi:10.1002/nur.20084
Kaldor, J., J. A. Harris, E. Glazer, S. Glaser, R. Neutra, R. Mayberry, V. Nelson, L. Robinson, and D. Reed. 1984. Statistical association between cancer incidence and major-cause mortality, and estimated residential exposure to air emissions from petroleum and chemical plants. Environmental Health Perspectives 54:319–332.
Poloniecki, J. D., R. W. Atkinson, A. P. de Leon, and H. R. Anderson. 1997. Daily Time Series for Cardiovascular Hospital Admissions and Previous Day’s Air Pollution in London, UK. Occupational and Environmental Medicine 54:535–540.
Rudel, R. A., R. E. Dodson, L. J. Perovich, R. Morello-Frosch, D. E. Camann, M. M. Zuniga, A. Y. Yau, A. C. Just, and J. G. Brody. 2010. Semivolatile Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds in Paired Indoor and Outdoor Air in Two Northern California Communities. Environmental Science & Technology 44:6583–6590.
Szanton SL, Thorpe RJ, Whitfield KE. Life-course Financial Strain and Health in African-Americans. Social science & medicine (1982). 2010;71(2):259-265. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.04.001.
By Daniel Menza, Data & GIS Intern, and Kyle Ferrar, Western Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance
Cover photo credit: Claycord.com
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/tesoro-refinery_re.jpg400900Kyle Ferrar, MPHhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngKyle Ferrar, MPH2017-05-10 09:48:052021-04-15 15:03:07Tracking Refinery Emissions in California’s Bay Area Refinery Corridor
As ThinkProgress reports, these two federal agencies will now resume the approval of offshore fracking permits. In response, Governor Jerry Brown made a plea to President Obama, to prevent fracking off California’s coast. Governor Brown asked President Obama to institute a permanent ban on all new offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters, saying:
California is blessed with hundreds of miles of spectacular coastline; home to scenic state parks, beautiful beaches, abundant wildlife and thriving communities,” Brown wrote in a letter to Obama. “Clearly, large new oil and gas reserves would be inconsistent with our overriding imperative to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and combat the devastating impacts of climate change.
A new report by Liza Tucker at Consumer Watchdog has reviewed the state regulatory agency’s own policies under the Brown Administration. The report claims, “Brown has nurtured drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the state while stifling efforts to protect the public.” The report asks Governor Brown to “direct regulators to reject any drilling in a protected coastal sanctuary, ban offshore fracking, and phase out oil drilling in state waters” among other recommendations.
FracTracker Alliance reviewed the data published by DOGGR on permitted offshore wells. (DOGGR refers to the Division of Oil, Gas, & Geothermal Resources, which regulates drilling in CA). Using API identification numbers as a timeline, we actually find that it is likely that 238 wells have been drilled offshore since the start of 2012. The DOGGR database only lists “spud” (drilling) and completion dates for 71 – a mere 1.3% of the 5,435 total offshore wells. DOGGR reports that 1,366 offshore wells are currently active production wells. It must be noted that these numbers are only estimations, since operators have a 2-year window to drill wells after receiving a permit and API number.
Using these methods of deduction, we find that since the beginning of 2012 the majority of offshore wells have been drilled offshore of Los Angeles County in the Wilmington Oil Field (204 in total); followed by 25 offshore in the Huntington Beach field; 7 in the West Montalvo field offshore of Ventura County, and 1 in the Belmont field, also offshore of Ventura County. These wells are shown as bright yellow circles in the map below. Additionally, the Center for Biological Diversity reports that at least 200 of the wells off California’s coast have been hydraulically fractured.
Offshore Oil and Gas Development and SB4-Approved Well Stimulations
In total, DOGGR data shows 5,435 offshore oil and gas wells. Of those listed as active, new or idle, they break down into well types as shown in Table 1 below.
Table 1. Offshore oil and gas well types
Well Type
Count
Oil and Gas Production
1,539
Dry Gas
5
Waste Disposal
14
Steam Flood
2
Water Flood
813
Pressure Maintenance
3
Observation
8
New Fracking under SB4 Rules
The map above also shows several datasets that detail the stimulation activity that has been occurring in California since the passage of SB4 under Jerry Brown. Prior to the adoption of the new stimulation regulations on July 1, 2015, operators submitted applications and received permits for a total of 2,130 wells. These well permits are shown in the map labeled “CA SB4 Interim Well Stimulation Permits.” Since July of 2015, 596 of these permitted wells have been stimulated. In the map above, the layer “CA SB4 Well Stimulation Disclosures” shows the time series of these wells. An additional 31 well stimulation treatment permit applications have been submitted to DOGGR, since the adoption of the final rules on July 1, 2015. They are shown in the map, labeled “CA SB4 Well Stimulation Treatment Permit Applications.”
Offshore drilling cover photo by Linda Krop, Environmental Defense Center
By Kyle Ferrar, Western Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Offshore-CA-Feature.jpg400900Kyle Ferrar, MPHhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngKyle Ferrar, MPH2017-02-07 14:31:072021-04-15 15:03:47More offshore drilling and “fracking” in California
Cover of Dangerous and Close report. Click to view report
FracTracker Alliance has been working with the Frontier Group and Environment America on a nationwide assessment of “fracked” oil and gas wells. The report is titled Dangerous and Close, Fracking Puts the Nation’s Most Vulnerable People at Risk. The assessment analyzed the locations of fracked wells and identified where the fracking has occurred near locations where sensitive populations are commonly located. These sensitive sites include schools and daycare facilities because they house children, hospitals because the sick are not able to fight off pollution as effectively, and nursing homes where the elderly need and deserve clean environments so that they can be healthy, as well. The analysis used data on fracked wells from regulatory agencies and FracFocus in nine states. Maps of these nine states, as well as a full national map are shown below.
No one deserves to suffer the environmental degradation that can accompany oil and gas development – particularly “fracking” – in their neighborhoods. Fracked oil and gas wells are shown to have contaminated drinking water, degrade air quality, and sicken both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Additionally, everybody responds differently to environmental pollutants, and some people are much more sensitive than others. In fact, certain sects of the population are known to be more sensitive in general, and exposure to pollution is much more dangerous for them. These communities and populations need to be protected from the burdens of industries, such as fracking for oil and gas, that have a negative effect on their environment. Commonly identified sensitive groups or “receptors” include children, the immuno-compromised and ill, and the elderly. These groups are the focus of this new research.
National Map
National interactive map of sensitive receptors near fracked wells
How annual incomes in the shadow of oil refineries compare to state and regional prosperity
Figure 1. North American Oil Refinery Capacity
Typically, we analyze the potential economic impacts of oil refineries by simply quantifying potential and/or actual capacity on an annual or daily basis. Using this method, we find that the 126 refineries operating in the U.S. produce an average of 100,000-133,645 barrels per day (BPD) of oil – or 258 billion gallons per year.
In all of North America, there are 158 refineries. When you include the 21 and 27 billion gallons per year produced by our neighbors to the south and north, respectively, North American refineries account for 23-24% of the global refining capacity. That is, of course, if you believe the $113 dollar International Energy Agency’s 2016 “Medium-Term Oil Market Report” 4.03 billion gallon annual estimates (Table 1 and Figure 1).
Table 1. Oil Refinery Capacity in the United States and Canada (Barrels Per Day (BPD))
Prince George & Moose Jaw Refining in BC and SK, 12-15K BPD
Pemex’s Ciudad Madero Refinery, 152K BPD
—
High
Exxon Mobil in TX & LA, 502-560K BPD
Valero and Irving Oil Refining in QC & NS, 265-300K BPD
Pemex’s Tula Refinery, 340K BPD
—
Median
100,000 BPD
85,000 BPD
226,500
109,000
Total Capacity
16.8 MBPD
1.8 MBPD
1.4 MBPD
22.1 MBPD
Census Tract Income Disparities
However, we would propose that an alternative measure of a given oil refinery’s impact would be neighborhood prosperity in the census tract(s) where the refinery is located. We believe this figure serves as a proxy for economic justice. As such, we recently used the above refinery location and capacity data in combination with US Census Bureau Cartographic Boundaries (i.e., Census Tracts) and the Census’ American FactFinder clearinghouse to estimate neighborhood prosperity near refineries.
Methods
Our analysis involved merging oil refineries to their respective census tracts in ArcMAP 10.2, along with all census tracts that touch the actual census tract where the refineries are located, and calling that collection the oil refinery’s sphere of influence, for lack of a better term. We then assigned Mean Income in the Past 12 Months (In 2014 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars) values for each census tract to the aforementioned refinery tracts – as well as surrounding regional, city, and state tracts – to allow for a comparison of income disparities. We chose to analyze mean income instead of other variables such as educational attainment, unemployment, or poverty percentages because it largely encapsulates these economic indicators.
In today’s world, the enormous gap in the distribution of wealth, income and public benefits is growing ever wider, reflecting a general trend that is morally unfair, politically unwise and economically unsound… excessive income inequality restricts social mobility and leads to social segmentation and eventually social breakdown…In the modern context, those concerned with social justice see the general increase in income inequality as unjust, deplorable and alarming. It is argued that poverty reduction and overall improvements in the standard of living are attainable goals that would bring the world closer to social justice.
Environmental regulatory agencies like to separate air pollution sources into point and non-point sources. Point sources are “single, identifiable” sources, whereas non-point are more ‘diffuse’ resulting in impacts spread out over a larger geographical area. We would equate oil refineries to point sources of socioeconomic and/or environmental injustice. The non-point analysis would be far more difficult to model given the difficulties associated with converting perceived quality of life disturbance(s) associated with infrastructure like compressor stations from the anecdotal to the empirical.
Results
Primarily, residents living in the shadow of 80% of our refineries earn nearly $16,000 less than those in the surrounding region – or, in the case of urban refineries, the surrounding Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Only residents living in census tracts within the shadow of 25 of our 126 oil refineries earn around $10,000 more annually than those in the region.
On average, residents of census tracts that contain oil refineries earn 13-16% less than those in the greater region and/or MSAs (Figure 2). Similarly, in comparing oil refinery census tract incomes to state averages we see a slightly larger 17-21% disparity (Figure 3).
Digging Deeper
Figure 4. United States Oil Refinery Income Disparities (Note: Larger points indicate oil refinery census tracts that earn less than the surrounding region or city.)
Oil refinery income disparities seem to occur not just in one region, but across the U.S. (Figure 4).
The biggest regional/MSA disparities occur in northeastern Denver neighborhoods around the Suncor Refinery complex (103,000 BPD), where the refinery’s census tracts earn roughly $42,000 less than Greater Denver residents1. California, too, has some issues near its Los Angeles’ Valero and Tesoro Refineries and Chevron’s Bay Area Refinery, with a combined daily capacity of nearly 600 BPD. There, two California census associations in the shadow of those refineries earn roughly $38,000 less than Contra Costa and Los Angeles Counties, respectively. In the Lone Star state Marathon’s Texas City, Galveston County refinery resides among census tracts where annual incomes nearly $33,000 less than the Galveston-Houston metroplex. Linden, NJ and St. Paul, MN, residents near Conoco Phillips and Flint Hills Resources refineries aren’t fairing much better, with annual incomes that are roughly $35,000 and nearly $33,000 less than the surrounding regions, respectively.
Click on the images below to explore each of the top disparate areas near oil refineries in the U.S. in more detail. Lighter shades indicate census tracks with a lower mean annual income ($).
Conclusion
Clearly, certain communities throughout the United States have been essentially sacrificed in the name of Energy Independence and overly-course measures of economic productivity such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The presence and/or construction of mid- and downstream oil and gas infrastructure appears to accelerate an already insidious positive feedback loop in low-income neighborhoods throughout the United States. Only a few places like Southeast Chicago and Detroit, however, have even begun to discuss where these disadvantaged communities should live, let alone how to remediate the environmental costs.
Internally Displaced People
There exists a robust history of journalists and academics focusing on Internally Displaced People (IDP) throughout war-torn regions of Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia – to name a few – and most of these 38 million people have “become displaced within their own country as a result of violence.” However, there is a growing body of literature and media coverage associated with current and potential IDP resulting from rising sea levels, drought, chronic wildfire, etc.
The issues associated with oil and gas infrastructure expansion and IDPs are only going to grow in the coming years as the Shale Revolution results in a greater need for pipelines, compressor stations, cracker facilities, etc. We would propose there is the potential for IDP resulting from the rapid, ubiquitous, and intense expansion of the Hydrocarbon Industrial Complex here in the United States.
Over 38,000 oil and gas wells have likely been hydraulically fractured in California. The last permitted hydraulic fracturing operation in CA was approved in June 2015. Additionally, new aquifer exemption proposals will make it easier for operators to obtain hydraulic fracturing permits. One of the most interesting and troubling issues we found when analyzing the data on violations is that operators with the highest number of new well permits are also responsible for the majority of violations. In this article, we provide a look at these and other the trends of unconventional drilling in CA.
Updated CA Shale Viewer
First of all, the CA Shale Viewer has been updated! New data has been uploaded into the map about unconventional drilling in California, and new data resources have been used to identify shale gas activity (Fig. 1). Recent reports in CA have exposed what many researchers expected – hydraulic fracturing has been occurring in the state without any oversight or documentation for a long time.
In this presentation of the Updated CA Shale Viewer we showcase an analysis of these new data sources that better describe unconventional drilling in CA. We then look to new well permitting data to see what current spatial trends may mean for future oil and gas development. We also look at a sample of operator violations issued by the state regulatory agency to tell us a bit about who the bad actors may be.
Figure 1. CA Shale Viewer – Location of well stimulation & other unconventional oil & gas activity
Fracking in California has been put on hold at the moment as a result of low oil prices combined with the new permitting requirements for groundwater monitoring. In 2015, the CA Council on Science and Technology (CCST) released a report on hydraulic fracturing, as required by State Bill 4, proposed by Senator Pavley. The legislation required the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources to create regulations for hydraulic fracturing and other stimulation activities such as acidizing. The report highlighted the necessity of protecting California’s groundwater resources. As another requirement of SB4, the state water resources control board adopted Model Criteria for Groundwater Monitoring in areas of Oil and Gas Well Stimulation, which includes three main components:
Area-specific required groundwater monitoring near stimulation wells by operators
Requirements for designated contractor sampling and testing
Regional scale groundwater monitoring to be implemented by the State Water Board
With these requirements in place to protect groundwater, using hydraulic fracturing and other “extreme” high energy input techniques to extract oil is not currently economical in California. Operators have not submitted a permit application for hydraulic fracturing in CA since June 2015.
This status may change in the near future, though, as DOGGR has proposed groundwater monitoring exemptions for 3 large aquifer systems in Kern and Arroyo Grande counties. Such a proposal would mean that operators would not have to monitor for groundwater contamination in these areas when using hydraulic fracturing or other stimulation technologies like acidizing.
Previous Fracking Activity
One outcome of the aforementioned CCST report on hydraulic fracturing was a review of stimulation activity that has occurred in CA but went undocumented. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) screened thousands of oil and gas well logs and records to calculate the extent to which hydraulic fracturing was actually being used in California’s oil fields. LBNL derived “Well Stimulation Treatment” probabilities based on the number of well records that reported utilizing hydraulic fracturing.
Probabilities were then derived for each pool, which is a geographically isolated formation within an oil field. Using these probabilities, FracTracker calculated a conservative estimate for the number of stimulated wells in the state at over 38,000. There are 228,010 unique Well ID’s listed in the DOGGR database. This puts the proportion of hydraulically fractured wells in California at 16.7% of the total 228,090 wells known.
New Wells
Whereas many other states break down their oil and gas data to show in what phase of development a well may be, CA identifies all wells between the permitted and producing/injecting phase as “new.” In Figure 2 below you can see the wells identified in 2016 as “new.” The DOGGR dataset shows there are currently 6,561 new wells in California as of July 2016. Counts of new well permits were calculated for individual operators and are listed below in Table 1.
Table 1. Top 10 operators according to new well permit counts in California, along with the number of new well permits currently active, the percent those permits represent of total new well permits in the state, and the percentage of violations the operator is responsible in the DOGGR dataset provided to FracTracker Alliance.
Order
Operator
Permit Count
Permit %
Violations %
1
Aera Energy LLC
2012
30.67%
22.34%
2
Chevron U.S.A. Inc.
968
14.75%
20.35%
3
California Resources Production Corporation
768
11.70%
5.89%
4
Linn Operating, Inc.
574
8.75%
12.04%
5
E & B Natural Resources Management Corporation
572
8.71%
1%
6
California Resources Elk Hills, LLC
374
5.70%
5.52%
7
Seneca Resources Corporation
185
2.82%
2.83%
8
Freeport-McMoRan Oil & Gas LLC
164
2.50%
15.22%
9
Vaquero Energy, Inc.
154
2.35%
0.22%
10
Macpherson Oil Company
116
1.77%
2.09%
There are 68 fields in CA that have added new wells in the new DOGGR dataset published in July 2016. The top 10 fields are listed in Table 2 below.
Table 2. Top 10 Oil Fields by Permit (New Well) Count
Order
Oil Field
Well Count
1
Belridge, South
1518
2
Midway-Sunset
903
3
Poso Creek
553
4
Lost Hills
488
5
Cymric
336
6
Kern River
294
7
Elk Hills
276
8
Kern Front
233
9
McKittrick
186
10
Belridge, North
174
In Figure 2 below, the counts of new wells in fields are shown in shades of yellow/red. The fields with the highest number of new wells are located in the Central Valley. The top 10 operators’ wells are also identified. The majority of new well permits are located in the South Belridge oil field, and the majority of those wells are operated by Aera Energy. As can be seen in the map, most new wells are located in fields in Kern county, but Santa Barbara and Fresno, and even Salinas counties have fields with 40 or more new well permits.
Figure 2. New Well Permitting Map of Unconventional Drilling in California
In most states with heavy oil and gas drilling, data on violations is collected by the state regulatory agency, aggregated in datasets and spreadsheets, and made available to the public. FracTracker has done analyses with such data in the past.
In Pennsylvania for instance, a 2011 look at the data showed us that as the number of inspectors on the ground in the Marcellus Shale fields increases, the number of violations/well actually decrease. This was important information that challenged the cynical hypothesis: that more inspectors mean additional eyes on the ground to identify more violations during inspections. In reality, more inspectors actually mean that operators are held to higher standards, and further best management practices (BMPs) are employed. This trend at least seemed to be the case in Pennsylvania. As a regulatory agency, such knowledge is incredibly important, and even validates increased spending and budgets for more personnel.
In California, the issue of publishing violations data is again met with a similar response from the Division of Oil Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), specifically the “Oh, is that my job?” question.
How is it shared?
At FracTracker, we spent time working with regulatory officials at DOGGR to get some data on violations. We were informed that at some point in the future, the data may be aggregated and available digitally. Until then, however, a request for the data would have to be made to each of the six district offices individually and would take approximately a year to pull together scanned copies of violations notices in PDF format. Unfortunately, we at FracTracker do not have the capacity to process such files. Instead we asked for anything DOGGR had digitally available, and we were provided with a sample subset of 2,825 violations dating mostly from 2013 and 2014 and only in District 2, the Los Angeles Basin.
What does CA violations data look like?
Looking at the sample of data in Table 2, we see that the majority of violations are caused by the operators that also have the most new well permits. Aera Energy, in particular, is responsible for over 1/5 of all violations in our sample set. Limiting factors and sampling bias of the sample set of violations may impact this analysis, though, as all violations are limited to Los Angeles County. Operators that mostly operate in the Central Valley will be under represented in the violations count. When more violations data becomes available we will be sure to expand this analysis.
Bans and Regulations on Unconventional Drilling in California
Although every state regulatory agency lambasts that they have the most comprehensive and conservative set of oil and gas extraction regulations, California regulators may actually be right. That is, save for New York which has banned hydraulic fracturing outright.
As the price of oil rebounds closer to $100/barrel, there will be more interest by operators to increase unconventional drilling in California. The addition of new aquifer exemptions will make it all the more appealing. These local movements are therefore incredibly important to ensure that “extreme” extraction methods like fracking don’t expand in the future.
Feature Photo: South Belridge field by Sarah Leen, National Geographic
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/southbelridge_NatGeo_re.jpg400900Kyle Ferrar, MPHhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngKyle Ferrar, MPH2016-07-26 04:35:192020-03-12 17:18:14Trends in California’s Oil and Gas Development
CA Crude by Rail, from the Bakken Shale and Canada’s Tar Sands to California Refineries By Kyle Ferrar, Western Program Coordinator & Kirk Jalbert, Manager of Community Based Research & Engagement
Refineries in California plan to increase capacity and refine more Bakken Shale crude oil and Canadian tar sands bitumen. However, CA’s refinery communities that already bear a disparate amount of the burden (the refinery corridor along the north shore of the East Bay) will be more impacted than they were previously. New crude-by-rail terminals will put additional Californians at risk of accidents such as spills, derailments, and explosions. Additionally, air quality in refinery communities will be further degraded as refineries change to lower quality sources of crude oil. Below we discuss where the raw crude oil originates, why people are concerned about crude-by-rail projects, and what CA communities are doing to protect themselves. We also discuss our GIS analysis, showing the number of Californians living within the half-mile blast zones of the rail lines that currently are or will be supported by the new and existing crude by rail terminal projects.
Sources of Raw Crude Oil
Figure 1. Sources of crude oil feedstock refined in California over time (CA Energy Commission, 2015)
California’s once plentiful oil reserves of locally extracted crude are dwindling and nearing depletion. Since 1985, crude extraction in CA has dropped by half. Production from Alaska has dropped even more, from 2 million B/D (barrels per day) to around 500,000 B/D. The 1.9 million B/D refining capacity in CA is looking for new sources of fuels. Refineries continue to supplement crude feedstock with oil from other sources, and the majority has been coming from overseas, specifically Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This trend is shown in figure 1.
Predictions project that sources of raw crude oil are shifting to the energy intensive Bakken formation and Canadian Tar Sands. The Borealis Centre estimates an 800% increase of tar sands oil in CA refineries over the next 25 years (NRDC, 2015). The increase in raw material from these isolated locations means new routes are necessary to transport the crude to refineries. New pipelines and crude-by-rail facilities would be necessary, specifically in locations where there are not marine terminals such as the Central Valley and Central Coast of CA. The cheapest way for operators in the Canadian Tar Sands and North Dakota’s Bakken Shale to get their raw crude to CA’s refinery markets is by railroad (30% less than shipping by marine routes from ports in Oregon and Washington), but this process also presents several issues.
CA Crude by Rail
More than 1 million children — 250,000 in the East Bay — attend school within one mile of a current or proposed oil train line (CBD, 2015). Using this “oil train blast zone” map developed by ForestEthics (now called Stand) you can explore the various areas at risk in the US if there was an oil train explosion along a rail line. Unfortunately, there are environmental injustices that exist for communities living along the rail lines that would be transporting the crude according to another ForestEthics report.
The specific focus of the map in Figure 2 is the five proposed and eight existing crude-by-rail terminals that allow oil rail cars to unload at the refineries. The eight existing rail terminals have a combined capacity of 496,000 barrels. Combined, the 15 terminals would increase CA’s crude imports to over 1 million B/D by rail. The currently active terminals are shown with red markers. Proposed terminals are shown with orange markers, and inactive terminals with yellow markers. Much of the data on terminals was taken from the Oil Change International Crude by Rail Map, which covers the entire U.S.
The same type of facility is currently operating in the East Bay’s refinery corridor in Richmond, CA. The Kinder Morgan Richmond terminal was repurposed from handling ethanol to crude oil, but with no public notice. The terminal began operating without conducting an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) or public review of the permit. Unfortunately, this anti-transparent process was similar to a tactic used by another facility in Kern County. The relatively new (November 2014) terminal in Taft, CA operated by Plains All American Pipeline LLC also did not conduct an EIR, and the permit is being challenged on the grounds of not following the CA Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
EIRs are an important component of the permitting process for any hydrocarbon-related facility. In April 2015 in Pittsburg, for example, a proposed 50,000 B/D terminal at the WesPac Midstream LLC’s railyard was abandoned due to community resistance and criticism over the EIR from the State Attorney General, along with the larger proposal of a 192,000 B/D marine terminal.
Crude-by-rail terminals bring with them not only the threat of derailments and the risk of other such accidents, but the terminals are also a source of air emissions. Terminals – both rail and marine – are major sources of PAH’s (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). The Sacramento Valley Railroad (SAV) Patriot rail oil terminal at a business park on the former McClellan Air Force Base property actually had its operating permit withdrawn by Sacramento air quality regulators due to this issue (read more). The terminal was unloading and reloading oil tanker cars.
FracTracker’s recent report, Emissions in the Refinery Corridor, shows that the refineries in this region are the major point source for emissions of both cancer and non-cancer risk drivers in the region. These air pollution sources get worse, however. According to the report by NRDC, changing the source of crude feedstock to increased amounts of Canadian Tar Sands oil and Bakken Shale oil would:
… increase the levels of highly toxic fugitive emissions; heavy emissions of particulate, metals, and benzene; result in a higher risk of refinery accidents; and the accumulation of petroleum coke* (a coal-like, dusty byproduct of heavy oil refining linked to severe respiratory impacts). This possibility would exacerbate the harmful health effects faced by the thousands of low-income families that currently live around the edges of California’s refineries. These effects are likely to include harmful impacts to eyes, skin, and the nervous and respiratory systems. Read NRDC Report
The contribution to climate change from accessing the tar sands also needs to be considered. Extracting tar sands is estimated to release on average 17% average more green-house gas (GHG) emissions than conventional oil extraction operations in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of State. (Greenhouse gases are gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change on a global scale.) The refining process, too, has a larger environmental / public health footprint; refining the tar sands to produce gasoline or diesel generates an average of 81% more GHGs (U.S. Dept of State. Appendix W. 2015). In total this results in a much larger climate impact (NRDC, NextGen Climate, Forest Ethics. 2015).
Local Fights
People opposed to CA crude by rail have been fighting the railway terminal proposals on several fronts. In Benicia, Valero’s proposal for a rail terminal was denied by the city’s Planning Commission, and the project’s environmental impact report was denied, as well. The city of Benicia, however, hired lawyers to ensure that the railway projects are built. The legality of railway development is protected regardless of the impacts of what the rails may be used to ship. This legal principle is referred to as “preemption,” which means the federal permitting prevents state or local actions from trying to limit or block development. In this case, community and environmental advocacy groups such as Communities for a Better Environment, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Stanford-Mills Law Project all agree the “preemption” doctrine doesn’t apply here. They believe preemption does not disallow the city or other local governments from blocking land use permits for the refinery expansion and crude terminals that unload the train cars at the refinery. The Planning Commission’s decision is being appealed by Valero, and another meeting is scheduled for September, 2016.
The fight for local communities along the rail-lines is more complicated when the refinery is far way, under the jurisdiction of other municipalities. Such is the case for the Phillips 66 Santa Maria Refinery, located on California State Highway 1 on the Nipomo Mesa. The Santa Maria refinery is requesting land use permits to extend track to the Union Pacific Railway that transits CA’s central coast. The extension is necessary to bring the rail cars to the proposed rail terminal. This project would not just increase traffic within San Luis Obispo, but for the entirety of the rail line, which passes directly through the East Bay. The project would mean an 80-car train carrying 2 million gallons of Bakken Crude would travel through the East Bay from Richmond through Berekely and Emeryville to Jack London Square and then south through Oakland and the South Bay. This would occur 3 to 5 times per week. In San Luis Obispo county 88,377 people live within the half-mile blast zone of the railroad tracks.
In January, the San Luis Obispo County Planning Department proposed to deny Phillips 66 the permits necessary for the rail spur and terminals. This decision was not easy, as Phillips 66, a corporation ranked Number 7 on the Fortune 500 list, has fought the decision. The discussion remained open with many days of meetings, but the majority of the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission spoke in favor of the proposal at a meeting Monday, May 16. There is overwhelming opposition to the rail spur project coming from 250 miles away in Berkeley, CA. In 2014, the Berkeley and Richmond city councils voted to oppose all transport of crude oil through the East Bay. Without the rail spur approval, Phillips 66 declared the Santa Maria refinery would otherwise transport oil from Kern County via 100 trucks per day. Learn more about this project.
GIS Analysis
GIS techniques were used to estimate the number of Californians living in the half mile “at risk” blast zone in the communities hosting the crude-by-rail lines. First, we estimated the total population of Californians living a half mile from the BNSF and UP rail lines that could potentially transport crude trains. Next, we limited our study area to just the East Bay refinery corridor, which included Contra Costa and the city of Benicia in Solano County. Then, we estimated the number of Californians that would be living near rail lines if the Phillips 66 Santa Maria refinery crude by rail project is approved and becomes operational. The results are shown below:
Population living within a half mile of rail lines throughout all of California: 6,900,000
Population living within a half mile of rail lines in CA’s East Bay refinery communities: 198,000
Population living within a half mile of rail lines along the UP lines connecting Richmond, CA to the Phillips 66 Santa Maria refinery: 930,000
Emissions from Refineries and other Sources By Kyle Ferrar, Western Program Coordinator & Kirk Jalbert, Manager of Community Based Research & Engagement
Key Takeaways
Refineries and petrochemical industry in the Bay Area’s refinery corridor are responsible for the majority of the risk-driving point source emissions in this region.
The Chevron Richmond refinery has the largest refining capacity and emits the most hazardous air pollutants (HAPs).
The Tesoro refinery in Martinez and the Shell refinery in Martinez emit the most HAPs per barrel of oil (based on refining capacity).
The Valero refinery in Benicia, the Tesoro refinery in Martinez, and the Shell refinery in Martinez emit the most criteria air pollutants (CAPs).
If refineries increase their capacity and process more crude, the emissions of these various pollutants will invariably increase.
New emissions rules need to prioritize ambient air quality and hold the Air District and elected officials accountable for policies that increase risk.
Overview of the Bay Area’s Refinery Corridor
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is revising the rules for facilities that emit a variety of hazardous pollutants into the air. The current draft of the new rules could actually increase the amount polluters are allowed to emit. The communities at risk are speaking out to support policies that would reduce the amount of air pollutants rather than increase the limits. In support of these communities, the FracTracker Alliance has focused on analyzing the sources of air pollutants in the region. The East Bay Oil Refinery Corridor is located along the North Shore of the East Bay, stretching from Richmond, CA east to Antioch, CA. The region has been named a “sacrifice zone” for the heavy concentration of petrochemical industrial sites. In addition to the five refineries along the north coast, these communities host a variety of other heavy industries and waste sites. The locations of these facilities have been mapped previously by the FracTracker Alliance, here. In the report we found that people of color, specifically African Americans, are disproportionately represented in the community demographics. Novel results indicate that Hispanic students may be disproportionately impacted by the presence of the petrochemical industry. In this post, we continue the analysis of risk in the region by providing an analysis of the contributions to air pollution from these facilities.
Regulations
Refineries and other sources of air pollution are regulated by the U.S. EPA’s Clean Air Act (CAA). The CAA regulates two classes of pollutants:
Criteria air pollutants (CAPs) – including sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter; and
Hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), which includes a list of 594 carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic chemicals that pose a risk to those exposed.
In addition, California regulates green-house-gas (GHG) emissions, and refineries are the second largest industrial source of GHGs. These regulations get applied when facilities need to obtain a permit for a new source of air pollution, or if a facility is making a structural change that could significantly affect emissions. Facilities are required to use “Maximum Available Control Technology” as it relates to industry best practices to control emissions. With these existing engineering controls, refinery emissions are released into the air from the multiple sources/processes shown below in Figure 1. Notice that a large amount of emissions are simply from “Leaks.”
Figure 1. Breakdown of emissions from petroleum refineries (US EPA, 2011)
The new rules drafted by the BAAQMD to regulate emissions from the East Bay Oil Refinery Corridor would not cap emissions at any level. The current proposal outlines limits on emissions per barrel, promoting efficiency rather than focusing on emissions reductions. Air quality in the refinery corridor could be improved only if this approach was proposed in conjunction with emission limits or reductions. But as the currently proposed rules stand, emissions could actually increase. Enforcement procedures for infractions are also limited. If a refinery’s emissions violate the per barrel standards, the refinery has a whole 3 years to address the violation. Also, these new rules come at a time when refineries are moving to increase the volume of crude coming in from other regions, such as Canada’s tar sands and the Bakken Shale. These regions produce much lower “quality” crude oil, with much higher emissions. This all amounts to more air pollution rather than less.
Community and environmental activist groups such as the Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and the Bay Area Refinery Corridor Coalition have raised specific issues with the proposed rules as they stand. First, they allow for increase emissions when Air District data forecasts increasing refinery emissions, despite declining local and domestic fuels demand. Refining the lower quality crude is more energy intensive, which also results in increased emissions. In order to offset the increased emissions, CBE reports that refineries can just increase total refining production to decrease per barrel averages. This would in affect increase emissions to meet regulatory requirements. In addition, transporting the crude via new shipping routes would put additional communities at elevated risk of railway accidents (CBE, 2015).
Ambient Air Quality
Air quality in the Bay Area has been continuously improving over the last few decades, but these refinery communities are still at a significantly higher risk of dying from heart disease and strokes. The largest disparity is felt by the African-American populations. Data for Richmond, CA shows they are 1.5 times more likely to die from these diseases than the Contra Costa county average (Casanova, Diemoz, Lifshay, McKetney, 2010). Emissions reductions not only favor the local communities such as the refinery corridor that are most impacted, but also all of the downwind communities, specifically the Central Valley. The Air District’s 2012 report of PM provides a summary of these trends. PM is an important because it is “the air pollutant that causes by far the greatest harm to public health in the bay area. It is a useful indices because there is a linear correlation between increasing ambient concentrations and mortality. Figure 2 shows the progress the Bay Area has made, overall. This graph is based on regional monitors and not those in the refinery communities, where improvements have not been as drastic. In Figure 3 below, the graph shows major pollutant drivers of seven health risks and how health impacts have been reduced over this time period. What we see from the bar graph, is that non-diesel anthropogenic point sources of PM contribute the most to risk for the majority of health endpoints considered. Across the entire bay area, refineries account for 6% of all PM (BAAQMD, 2012).
An overview of other chemicals associated with the petrochemical industry in ambient air and their resulting health effects are outlined in tables 1-3 below. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are chemicals of primary concern, specific to petroleum refinery emissions, and are known risk drivers for the region.
Figure 2. Measurements of PM, averaged across the entire bay area, over time – showing an overall improvement in air quality.
Figure 3. Contribution of different species of air pollution to health impacts. The analysis is specific to the bay area and compares health risks estimates from the past (1980s) to estimates in 2012.
Table 1. Health impacts from criteria air pollutants
Criteria Air Pollutants
Compound
Health Effect
Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) and Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx)
Array of adverse respiratory effects, airway inflammation in healthy people, increased respiratory symptoms in people with asthma
Carbon Monoxide (CO)
Harmful health effects associated with the reduction of oxygen delivery to the body’s organs (heart and brain) and tissues
Particulate Matter
Increased respiratory symptoms, irritation of the airways, coughing, or difficulty breathing, decreased lung function; aggravated asthma; development of chronic bronchitis; irregular heartbeat; nonfatal heart attacks; and premature death in people with heart or lung disease
Table 2. Health impacts from hazardous air pollutants known to be emitted from petroleum refineries
Hazardous Air Pollutants
Compound
Acute
Chronic
Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene, Xylenes
Neurological effects, Irritation of the eye, skin and respiratory tract
Blood disorders (reduced number of red blood cells and aplastic anemia), cancer.
1,3-Butadiene
Irritation of the eyes, throat and respiratory tract
Cardiovascular effects, leukemia, cancer
Naphthalene
Hemolytic anemia, damage to the liver, neurological effects
Cataracts, damage to the retina, hemolytic anemia, cancer
PAHs
Skin disorders, depression of the immune system
Skin disorders (dermatitis, photosensitization), depression of the immune system, damage to the respiratory tract, cataracts, cancer
Table 3. Health impacts from other pollutants emitted from petroleum refineries
Other Pollutants
Compound
Mechanism
Health Effect
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC)
Combine with NOx in sunlight to create ozone
Significantly reduce lung function and induce respiratory inflammation in normal. Healthy people during periods of moderate exercise, symptoms include chest pain, coughing, nausea, and pulmonary congestion
Compounds with high global warming potential contribute to climate change
Increase in average temperatures, higher levels of ground-level ozone, increased drought, harm to water resources, ecosystems and wildlife, health risk to sensitive populations
North Coast Emissions
With these gains in ambient air quality it is hard to fathom why regulators would consider allowing refineries to increase emissions inventories. For this analysis, the focus was to map and compare emissions inventories from numerous industrial sites, with a particular focus on the petroleum refineries.
Current refinery capacities as of 2014 are shown in Figure 4, below. The Richmond Chevron has the largest refining capacity in the region, by far. Refining capacity is the maximum amount of crude oil the refinery is allowed to refine, according to their permit. Refining capacity numbers are used in place of actual refined crude volumes for this analysis, because actual crude volumes are considered proprietary information and are not published by the California Energy Commission (CEC).
The Richmond refinery has a raw crude (atmospheric crude is the technical term) refinement capacity over twice as large as the Phillips 66 San Francisco Refinery, and almost 40% larger than the Tesoro (Golden Eagle) refinery, which is the second largest in the region. According to the newly proposed rules, this would allow the Richmond refinery to emit the most pollutants.
The raw total emissions data is shown in Figure 5. The Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo contributes the least to ambient air quality degradation. The Chevron Richmond refinery processes 40 – 100% more than the four other refineries, and emits 10 – 570% more than the other refiners. This large difference in capacity and emissions means that Chevron Richmond is more efficient than some, but much less efficient than others. To understand the efficiency differences between the refineries, the total HAPs emissions were adjusted by the refining capacity, shown below in Figure 6. With this data we can rank the refining efficiency specifically for HAPs emissions, based on facility capacity. The Tesoro refinery in Martinez and the Shell refinery in Martinez emit the most HAPs per barrel oil (based on refining capacity). From highest emitter to lowest emitter per barrel of crude, the facilities can be ranked:
Tesoro Refining & Marketing Co LLC (Golden Eagle Refinery in Martinez)
Shell Oil Products (Martinez Refinery)
Chevron Products Co Richmond Refinery
Valero Refining Co – California Benicia Refinery
Phillips 66 San Francisco Refinery (Rodeo Refinery)
Figure 4. Operating capacity of refineries. The bars show the maximum amount of crude the refineries are allowed to process daily, in barrels (1 barrel = 42 gallons).
Figure 5. Total amount of HAPs emissions from East Bay refineries
Figure 6. Relative HAPs emitted from each refinery adjusted by the crude capacity
These refineries along with the other industrial sites in the region have been mapped below in Figure 7. The data has been displayed to show the HAPs emissions from these facilities. The amounts of emissions are shown with graduated circles. The larger the circle, the higher the emissions. The cumulative summation of HAPs is a good value for comparing between facilities with diverse emission inventories (the list of all species of emitted pollutants), but different HAP chemicals have very different effects, both in magnitude and in health impacts. Different chemicals will affect different body systems, as described above in Tables 1-3 above. We have therefore incorporated individual chemical data into the map as well (Figure 7, below). The data displayed shows the total sum of HAPs emitted (in lbs/year) from petrochemical industrial facilities in the region. Explore the map to see emission sources for a selection of important pollutants. Smaller industrial sites/sources have been left out of the map.
Figure 7. Map of the East Bay’s Refinery Corridor with emissions data
View Map Fullscreen | How Our Maps Work
If you open the map into its own page, you can toggle between individual chemical emissions from these facilities. Use the layers tab to change the chemicals displayed. For more information on the individual chemicals, continue reading below.
This unique selection of pollutants was chosen by identifying the highest health risk drivers in the region. They are known to increase both cancer and non-cancer risk for residents in the bay area. The graphs that follow show the emissions inventories reported by each refinery. The refineries are organized on the X –axis according to increasing refining capacity, as they are in Figure 4, above.
Analysis of the graphs show that the Richmond Chevron facility is a largely responsible for 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, naphthalene, hydrogen cyanide, PAH’s, vanadium, lead and nickel compounds. The Tesoro refinery is mostly responsible for almost all of the 1,3-butadiene, and most responsible for hydrogen sulfide and VOCs. Shell is mostly responsible for the ethylbenzene, much of the mercury and sulfur dioxide emissions, and the most VOCs. Valero in Benicia is responsible for much of the 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, all BTEX compounds, the most nickel compounds, and the most oxides of nitrogen. And finally, the Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo with the lowest operating capacity also had the lowest emissions in almost every case except lead, which was very large compared to all refineries except Chevron Richmond. The Valero refinery in Benicia, the Tesoro refinery in Martinez, and the Shell refinery in Martinez emit the most criteria air pollutants (CAPs), including PM2.5 (particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5 um), sulfur dioxide, and oxides of nitrogen.
Figure 8 – 22. Emissions totals of various air pollutants from East Bay refineries
Marine Terminals
Emissions from marine terminals are also a significant source of HAPs and particulate matter. In the map in Figure 7, the marine terminals are shown with yellow markers. Their relative contributions of total hazardous pollutants are much less than the refineries and other sources, but when we look at specific risk drivers, such as 1,3-butadiene and benzene, we find that their contributions are quite sizable. Marine terminals are also a key component for the refineries looking to access more low-grade crude. Increasing the refining capacity of the refinery will also increase the emissions from the terminals.
The Tesoro Golden Eagle Refinery in Martinez, CA was recently approved for a 30-year lease on a new marine terminal. The new terminal will allow Tesoro to switch to processing lower-cost, lower-quality crude oil from California, Bakken crude, and Canadian tar sands. When crude is transported via ocean liner, besides the issue of air pollution there is the additional risk of an ocean spill. Tom Griffith, Martinez resident and co-founder of the Martinez Environmental Group and founding member of the Bay Area Refinery Corridor Coalition recently summed up the threat, saying:
When you take a close look at what is going on in the marine oil terminals along the refinery corridor from Richmond to Stockton, it’s chilling to imagine what could happen if a huge oil tanker carrying tar sands crude crashed in the Bay! (Earthjustice, 2015)
Incidents
Figure 23. Fires at Chevron Richmond Refinery 2012. Photo by John Sebastian Russo for the SF Chronicle
Like oil spills from tankers, there are other risks of industrial accidents for refineries that need to be considered. Accidents or incidents may occur that result in a sudden, large release of air pollution. Looking at the emissions data, the Richmond Chevron refinery with the largest production capacity may seem to be an efficient station compared to the other refineries. However, an explosion and large fire in 2012 there sent 15,000 community members to local hospitals with respiratory distress. The SF Chronicle’s coverage of the story can be found here. (Fire shown in photo right.) The incident resulted from pipes corroding and failing, and the facility failing to make the decision to shut down the process. The resulting plume of smoke is shown in the cover photo of this article. Other major explosions and fires have occurred in the recent past, as well, including a flaring incident in 2014, a fire in 2007, and two other explosion and fire events in 1999 and 1989.
Of course these events are not unique to the Chevron refinery. The Tesoro Golden Eagle refinery has a reputation of being the most dangerous refinery in the country for occupational hazards, and has one of the worst track records of violations.
Conclusions
If refineries increase their capacity and process more crude, the emissions of these various pollutants will invariably increase. Increased emissions elevate risk for surrounding communities, and in the bay area these communities already bare a disparate burden. Additionally, many of the pollutants will be transported with the prevailing wind that blows from the coast up the river delta and into the central valley. In FracTracker’s recent analysis of impacted communities in the refinery corridor, maps of air quality showed that the refinery communities are some of the most impacted in the entire bay area.
What we find in this report is that the refineries and petrochemical industry in the refinery corridor are responsible for the majority of the risk-driving emissions in this region. When the risk and total emissions are averaged for the entire Bay Area, the risk outcomes are much less than for those living in the communities hosting the industries. New emissions rules should prioritize contributions of emissions to ambient air pollution loads. The biggest issue with using a “per barrel” emissions limit is that it prioritizes the refining capacity rather than mitigating the existing health impacts. These types of policy decisions deal directly with risk management. The Air Management District must decide what amount of cancer and disease are acceptable to keep the refineries in the communities. An upper limit on emissions makes it easier to set a risk limit, an upper bound for health impacts. The upper limit also holds the Air Management District and elected officials accountable for their policy decisions.
BAAQMD. 2012. Summary of PM Report. Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Accessed 4/15/16.
** Feature image of the Richmond Chevron Refinery courtesy of D.H. Parks
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Chevron_2012_Cover.jpg400900Kyle Ferrar, MPHhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngKyle Ferrar, MPH2016-04-29 14:33:532020-03-13 08:40:32Air Pollution in the Bay Area’s Refinery Corridor
Kyle Ferrar, Western Program Coordinator & Kirk Jalbert, Manager of Community-Based Research & Engagement
Key Takeaways
Communities living along the North Coast of the East Bay region in California are the most impacted by the presence of the petrochemical industry in their communities.
Emissions from these facilities disproportionately degrade air quality in this corridor region putting residents at an elevated risk of cancer and other health impacts.
People of color are more likely to live near the refineries and are therefore disproportionately affected.
Refinery Corridor Introduction
The North Coast of California’s East Bay region hosts a variety of heavy industries, including petroleum refineries, multiple power plants and stations, chemical manufacturing plants, and hazardous waste treatment and disposal facilities. Nationwide, the majority of petroleum refineries are located in heavily industrialized areas or near crude oil sources. The north coast region is unique. Access to shipping channels and the location being central to the raw crude product from North Dakota and Canada to the North, and California’s central valley oil fields to the south has resulted in the development of a concentrated petrochemical infrastructure within the largely residential Bay Area. The region’s petrochemical development includes seven fossil fuel utility power stations that produce a total of 4,283 MW, five major oil refineries operated by Chevron, Phillips 66, Shell Martinez, Tesoro, and Valero, and 4 major chemical manufacturers operated by Shell, General Chemical, DOW, and Hasa Inc. This unequal presence has earned the region the title, “refinery corridor” as well as “sacrifice zone” as described by the Bay Area Refinery Corridor Coalition.
The hazardous emissions from refineries and other industrial sites are known to degrade local air quality. It is therefore important to identify and characterize the communities that are affected, as well as identify where sensitive populations are located. The communities living near these facilities are therefore at an elevated risk of exposure to a variety of chemical emissions. In this particular North Coast region, the high density of these industrial point sources of air pollution drives the risk of resultant health impacts. According to the U.S.EPA, people of color are twice as likely to live near refineries throughout the U.S. This analysis by FracTracker will consider the community demographics and other sensitive receptors near refineries along the north coast corridor.
In the map below (Figure 1) U.S. EPA risk data in CalEnviroscreen is mapped for the region of concern. The map shows the risk resulting specifically from industrial point sources. Risk along the North Coast is elevated significantly. Risk factors calculated for the region show that these communities are elevated above the average. The locations of industrial sites are also mapped, with specific focus on the boundaries or fencelines of petrochemical sites. Additional hazardous sites that represent the industrial footprint in the region have been added to the map including sites registered with Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) permits as well as Superfund and otherComprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) sites. The Toxmap TRI sites are facilities that require a permit to emit hazardous air pollutants. The superfund and other CERCLA sites are locations where a historical footprint of industry has resulted in contamination. The sites are typically abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste sites that are part of register for tax-funded clean-ups.
Figure 1. Interactive map of risk in the East Bay’s North Coast refinery corridor
Oil refineries in particular are unique sources of air emissions. There are 150 large domestic refineries throughout the United States. They are shown in the map in Figure 2 below. The majority (90%) of the refined products from these refineries are fuels; motor vehicle gasoline accounts for 40%. The refinery sites have hundreds of stacks, or point sources, and they emit a wide variety of pollutants, as outlined by the U.S. EPA:
Criteria Air Pollutants (CAPs)
Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)
Carbon Monoxide (CO)
Particulate Matter (PM)
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs)
Carcinogens, including benzene, naphthalene, 1,3-butadiene, PAH
Non-carcinogenic HAP, including HF and HCN
Persistent bioaccumulative HAP, including mercury and nickel
Greenhouse Gases (GHG)
Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S)
Figure 2. Map of North American Petroleum Refineries
Disparate health impacts are therefore a known burden for these Bay Area communities. The region includes the cities of Richmond, Pinole, Hercules, Rodeo, Crockett, Port Costa, Benicia, Martinez, Mt. View, Pacheco, Vine Hill, Clyde, Concord, Bay Point, Antioch, and Oakley. In addition to preserving the ecological system health of this intercostal region is also important for both the ecological biodiversity of the marsh as well as commercial and recreational purposes. These wetlands provide a buffer, able to absorb rising waters and abate flooding.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s (BAAQMD) Cumulative Impacts report identified areas where air pollution’s health impacts are relatively high in the San Francisco Bay Area. The report is does not limit their analysis to the North Coast, but shows that these regions with the most impacts are also the most vulnerable due to income, education level, and race and ethnicity. The report shows that there is a clear correlation between socio-economic disadvantages and racial minorities and the impacted communities. Figure 3 shows the regions identified by the BAAQMD as having the highest pollution indices.
Analysis
This analysis by FracTracker focuses specifically on the north shore of the East Bay region. Like the BAAQMD report, National Air toxic Assessment (NATA) data to identify census tracts with elevated risk. Specifically, elevated cancer and non-cancer risk from point sources emitting hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) as regulated by the U.S. EPA were used. CalEnviroScreen 2.0 data layers were also incorporated, specifically the U.S. EPA’s Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) data. RSEI uses toxic release inventory (TRI) data, emission locations and weather to model how chemicals spread in the air (in 810m-square grid units), and combines air concentrations with toxicity factors.
The census tracts that were identified as disproportionately impacted by air quality are shown in the map below (Figure 4). The demographics data for these census tracts are presented in the tables below. Demographics were taken from the U.S. census bureau’s 2010 Census Summary File 1 Demographic Profile (DP1). The census tracts shapefiles were downloaded from here.
Figure 4. Interactive Map of Petrochemical Sites and Neighboring Communities in the East Bays North Coast Industrial Corridor
Buffers were created at 1,000 ft; 2,000 ft; and 3,000 ft buffers from petrochemical sites. These distances were developed as part of a hazard screening protocol by researchers at the California Air Resources Board (ARB) to assess environmental justice impacts. The distances are based on environmental justice literature, ARB land use guidelines, and state data on environmental disamenities (Sadd et al. 2011). A demographical profile was summarized for the population living within a distance of 3,000 feet, and for the census tracts identified as impacted by local point sources in this region. The analysis is summarized in Table 1 below. Additional data on the socioeconomic status of the census tracts is found in Table 2.
Based on the increased percentage of minorities and indicators of economic hardship shows that the region within the buffers and the impacted census tracts host a disproportionate percentage of vulnerable populations. Of particular note is 30% increase in Non-white individuals compared to the rest of the state. We see in Table 2 that this is disparity is specifically for Black or African American communities, with an over 150% increase compared to the total state population. The number of households reported to be in poverty in the last 12 months of 2014 and those households receiving economic support via EBT are also elevated in this region. Additional GIS analysis shows that 7 healthcare facilities, 7 residential elderly care facilities, 32 licensed daycares, and 17 schools where a total of 10,474 students attended class in 2014. Of those students, 54.5% were Hispanic and over 84% identified as “Non-white.”
Table 1. Demographic Summaries of Race. Data within the 3,000 ft buffer of petrochemical sites was aggregated at the census block level.
Total Population
Non-White
Non-White (%ile)
Hispanic or Latino
Hispanic or Latino (%ile)
Impacted Census Tracts
387,446
212,307
0.548
138,660
0.358
3,000 ft. Buffer
77,345
41,696
0.539
30,335
0.392
State Total
37,253,956
–
0.424
–
0.376
Table 2. Additional Status Indicators taken from the 2010 census at the census tract level
Indicators (Census Tract data)
Impacted Count
Impacted Percentile
State Percentile
Children, Age under 5
27,854
0.072
0.068
Black or African American
60,624
0.156
0.062
Food Stamps (households)
–
0.1103
0.0874
Poverty (households)
–
0.1523
0.1453
Conclusion
The results of the refinery corridor analysis show that the communities living along the North Coast of the East Bay region are the most impacted by the presence of the petrochemical industry in their communities. Emissions from these facilities disproportionately degrade air quality in this corridor region putting residents at an elevated risk of cancer and other health impacts. The communities in this region are a mix of urban and single family homes with residential land zoning bordering directly on heavy industry zoning and land use. The concentration of industry in this regions places an unfair burden on these communities. While all of California benefits from the use of fossil fuels for transportation and hydrocarbon products such as plastics, the residents in this region bear the burden of elevated cancer and non-cancer health impacts.
Additionally, the community profile is such that residents have a slightly elevated sensitivity when compared to the rest of the state. The proportion of the population that is made up of more sensitive receptors is slightly increased. The region has suburban population densities and more children under the age of 5 than average. The number of people of color living in these communities is elevated compared to background (all of California). The largest disparity is for Black or African American residents. There are also a large number of schools located within 3,000 ft of at least one petrochemical site, where over half the students are Hispanic and the vast majority are students of color. Overall, people of color are disproportionately affected by the presence of the petrochemical industry in this region. Continued operation and any increases in production of the refineries in the East Bay disproportionately impact the disadvantaged and disenfranchised.
With this information, FracTracker will be elaborating on the work within these communities with additional analyses. Future work includes a more in depth look at emissions and drivers of risk on the region, mapping crude by rail terminals, and working with the community to investigate specific health endpoints. Check back soon.
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/chevron-refinery_cover.jpg400900Kyle Ferrar, MPHhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngKyle Ferrar, MPH2016-03-30 20:56:352020-03-12 17:30:45Petrochemical Industry Presence in East Bay CA’s North Coast Refinery Corridor
Who’s in charge here? By Kyle Ferrar, Western Program Coordinator
FracTracker Alliance recently worked with Clean Water Action to map an update to last year’s report* on the use of unlined, above ground oil and gas waste disposal pits, also known as sumps.
The new report identifies additional oil field wastewater pits and details how California regulators continue to allow these facilities to degrade groundwater, surface waters, and air quality. Other oil and gas production states do not permit or allow these type of operations due to the many documented cases of water contamination. A report published in 2011 identified unlined pits and other surface spills as the largest threat to groundwater quality. The sites are ultimately sacrifice zones, where the contamination from produced water and drilling mud solid wastes leaves a lasting fingerprint.
Central Coast & New Central Valley Pit Data
Figure 1. Central Coast wastewater pits
New data has been released by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, identifying the locations of 44 active wastewater facilities and 5 inactive facilities in the California counties of Monterey, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. The number of pits at each facility is not disclosed, but satellite imagery shows multiple pits at some facilities. The locations of the majority of central coast pits are shown in the map in Figure 1, to the right.
In the web map below (Figure 2), the most updated data shows the number of pits at “active” facilities (those currently operating), shown in red and green, and inactive pits, shown in yellow and orange. The number of pits at each facility in the central valley are shown by the size of the graduated circles. Pit count data for the central coast facilities was not reported, therefore all facilities are shown with a small marker.
Figure 2. Interactive map of California oil field wastewater pits
Exploring the new central coast data shows that the operators with the most facilities include Greka Oil & Gas Inc. (14), E & B Natural Resources (10), ERG Operating Company, LLC (6), and Chevron (5). As shown in the table below, the majority of central coast pits are located in Santa Barbara County.
Table 1. Summaries by County
Site Counts by Activity and County
Facility Counts
Pit Counts
County
Active
Inactive
Active
Inactive
Santa Barbara
35
2
Unknown
Unknown
Monterey
9
0
Unknown
0
San Luis Obispo
0
3
0
Unknown
Kern
161
191
673
347
Fresno
8
5
31
14
Tulare
6
1
28
1
Kings
5
0
14
0
San Benito
0
4
0
5
Grand Total
224
206
746
367
Wastewater Pit Regulations
Way back in 1988, the U.S. EPA recognized that the federal regulations governing disposal practices of wastewater are inadequate to protect public health, but has yet to take action (NRDC 2015). There is little chance the U.S. EPA will enact regulations focused on pits. In certain cases, if wastewaters spill or are discharged to surface waters the operations will fall under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act and will require a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Since the objective of the pit is to contain the wastewater to keep it away from surface waters, pits and the wastewater facilities in California that manage them do not require federal oversight. For now the responsibility to protect health and environment has been left to the states.
Most states have responded and have strict regulations for wastewater management. For the few states that allow unlined pits, the main use is storage of wastewater rather than as an dedicated method of disposal. The majority of high production states have banned or ended the use of unlined pits, including Texas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Mexico, Texas (Heberger & Donnelly 2015). An effective liner will prevent percolation of wastewaters into groundwater. The goal of California oil field wastewater pits is quite the opposite.
For California, percolation is the goal and a viable disposal option.
Therefore other regulations that require monitoring of liquid levels in the pits are moot. In fact there is no evidence of regulation requiring spill reporting in California whatsoever (Kuwayama et al. 2015).
Numerous other extraction states throughout the country have phased out the use of open pits entirely, including those with liners due to the common occurrence of liner failures. The list includes those new players in the shale boom using hydraulic fracturing techniques such as North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Colorado. Rather than using the pits as storage, these states’ regulatory agencies favor instead the protections of closed systems of liquid storage. Wastewaters are stored in large tanks, often the same tanks used to store the fresh water used in the hydraulic fracturing process.
Because hydraulic fracturing in California uses much less water, it should be much easier to manage the flowback fluids and other wastewaters. According to the CCST report, 60% of the produced water from hydraulic fracturing operations was disposed to these unlined pits. Regardless of extraction technique, oil extraction in California produces 15 times the amount of wastewater. In total, an estimated 40% of all produced water was discharged to unlined “percolation” pits. As the 3rd largest oil producing state in the country, this equates to a massive waste stream of about 130 billion gallons/year (Grinberg 2014).
Regulatory Action
The facilities’ permits identify waste discharge requirements (WDRs) that allow for the discharge of oil field wastewater to the “ground surface, into natural drainage channels, or into unlined surface impoundments.” Using the Race Track Hill and Fee 34 Facilities as an example, the WDRS place criteria limits on total dissolved solids (TDS), chlorides, and boron. If you disregard all the other toxic constituents not monitored, the allowable concentration limits set for these three wastewater constituents would be reasonable for a discharge permit on the east coast, where a receiving body of water could provide the volume necessary for dilution. When the wastewater is applied directly to the ground or into a pit, the evaporative loss of water results in elevated concentrations of these contaminants.
Even with these very lax regulations, a number of facilities are in violation of the few restrictions required in their permits. Cease and desist orders have been several operators, most notably to Valley Water Management’s Race Track Hill and Fee 34 Facilities. According to the Regional Water Board documents, the Fee 34 disregarded salinity limitations and other regulations. As a result the Regional Water Board found soil and groundwater contamination that “threatens or creates a condition of pollution in surface and groundwater, and may result in the degradation of water quality.” Reports show that 6 domestic supply and 12 agricultural supply wells are located within 1 mile of the Fee 34 facility. At the Race Track Hill Facility the wastewater is continuously sprayed over several acre fields in a small watershed of the Cottonwood Creek. During a rain, the salt and boron loadings that have accumulated in the soil over the past 60 years of spraying can create increased salt and boron loading in the Kern River and groundwater. This would be a violation of the Clean Water Act (CVRWQCB 2015).
As shown in Table 2, below, the majority of facilities are currently operating without a permit whatsoever (61.2%). Of the 72 facilities that bothered to get permits, 32 (44.4%) received the permit prior to 1975, before the Tulare Basin Plan was implemented to preserve water quality. Of the 183 active facilities in the Central Valley, only 15 facilities have received Cease and Desist (11% of permitted) or Cleanup and Abatement Orders (6% of unpermitted). Only 3 of the 41 active Central Coast facilities operate with a permit (7.3%).
These types of WDR permits that allow pollutants to concentrate in the soil and the groundwater and degrade air quality. Chemicals that pose a public health risk are not being monitored. But at this point, these facilities are not only sites of legacy contamination, but growing threats to groundwater security. Operators say that closing the pits will mean certain doom for oil extraction in California, and recent letters from operators make pleas to DOGGR, that their very livelihood depends on using the pits as dumping grounds. The pits are the cheapest and least regulated mode of disposal.
Table 2. Facility Status Summaries
Facility Status
Activity
Permitted
Permitted; Cease & Desist Order
Unpermitted
Unpermitted; Cleanup & Abatement Order
Grand Total
Active
75
9
137
6
227
Inactive
20
2
184
3
209
Grand Total
92
11
321
9
433
New Mexico Case Study
Much like the groundwater impacts documented by California’s Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, other states have been forced to deal with this issue. The difference is that other states have actually shut down the polluting facilities. In California, cease and desist orders have been met with criticism and pleas by operators, stating that the very livelihood of the oil and gas industry in California depends on wastewater disposal in pits. The same was said in other states such as New Mexico when these crude and antiquated practices were ended. Figure 3 below shows the locations of wastewater pits in New Mexico and the areas where groundwater was contaminated as a result of the pits.
The New Mexico oil and gas industry predicted in August 2008 that fewer drillers would sink wells in New Mexico, at least in part because of the new pit rule. Pro-industry (oil and gas) state representatives were concerned that new drilling techniques coupled with the pit rules could lead to an industry exodus from New Mexico, hoping that the Governor “would step in to help protect an important state revenue source.” But the state’s average rig count from June — when the pit rule took effect — through December 2008 was 7% higher than it was over the same period in the previous year. Development of oil and gas reserves is independent of such regulation. Read the FracTracker coverage of groundwater contamination in New Mexico, here!
Figure 3. Legacy map of cases where pits contaminated groundwater in New Mexico
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sumps_BrianvanderBrug_LATimes_Revised.jpg400900Kyle Ferrar, MPHhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngKyle Ferrar, MPH2016-03-09 14:39:482020-03-12 17:32:29More Oil Field Wastewater Pits Found in California!
