FRA places blame while DNR urges rejection of Tesoro

Union Pacific crews work Sunday, June 5, 2016, to get oil out of rail cars after Friday's derailment near Mosier. (Carli Brosseau/staff)

Feds blame railroad for fiery oil train derailment in gorge

via The Oregonian

Advanced electronic brakes proposed by regulators could have made the derailment less severe, Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg said. The brakes could have reduced the number of cars that went off the tracks and prevented the one that first burst into flames from being punctured, officials said.
"We're talking about upgrading a brake system that is from the Civil War era," Feinberg said. "It's not too much to ask these companies to improve their braking systems in the event of an accident so fewer cars are derailing."

"When they said those sheared lag bolts, that was the hint that said they really need to look in the direction of these other aspects," Ditmeyer told the AP. 

"These are heavy cars when they're fully loaded," and a treatment to reduce the volatility of the Bakken crude makes the oil heavier, he said.

The Oregon Department of Transportation last week asked federal rail authorities for a moratorium on oil trains in the Columbia River Gorge after also expressing concerns that the weight of the oil trains might be too much for the tracks.

The company defended its decision in a statement, reiterating the federal obligations it is under and highlighting the tiny fraction of its Oregon shipments — less than 1 percent — that come from oil trains.
In addition to state transportation officials, Multnomah County and several municipalities including Portland and Mosier have called on Congress and the White House for bans on oil being moved by rail, which is under the federal government's authority.

An oil train moves on the overpass next to a proposed waterfront redevelopment project in Vancouver, Washington. The Department of Natural Resources urged a state energy panel to advise against a proposed $210 million oil-by-rail terminal project, according to a brief filed ahead of hearings that begin Monday. The city of Vancouver also filed a brief stating its opposition to the project.. (Rob Davis/The Oregonian.OregonLive/2014) (Rob Davis/The Oregonian.OregonLive)

Washington agency wants Vancouver oil terminal plan shelved, citing fire risks

via The Oregonian

SEATTLE — A state agency in charge of protecting millions of acres of state land from wildfires is opposing a proposal to build an oil-by-rail terminal in Vancouver, citing risks of blazes from increased train traffic and other concerns.
The Department of Natural Resources urged a state energy panel to recommend that the $210 million project be rejected, according to a brief filed ahead of hearings that begin Monday.

The Department of Natural Resources said that based on the evidence, the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council cannot meet its obligations to assure the public that there are adequate safeguards and that the project will have minimal environmental impacts.
The council, which oversees the siting and permitting of large energy projects, will make a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has the final say.

 Meanwhile, new Coal regulations are being drawn up. 

Rally Shows the Feds How Seattle Feels About Coal

Not too many coal supporters at this public hearing.

via The Seattle Weekly

Activists, tribespeople, fishermen, politicians, and even a representative from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin turned up to take the stage at Westlake Park Tuesday morning — all to give the decades-long federal coal leasing program the middle finger, more or less.
“I come from upstream,” Bob LeResche, chairman of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, in Sheridan, Wyoming, told the eager crowd, “And I want to welcome you to our 40-year fight.”
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) currently leases 570 million acres of public land to coal companies — often atbargain basement prices — and the process for how that’s done hasn’t been touched for over 30 years. Many people, from scrappy environmental groups to the U.S. Department of the Interior, have long criticized the program as shortchanging the American public by vastly underestimating the market value of the coal. Now, that’s shifting: In January, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewel launched a three-year process for revamping the system, starting with a moratorium on new coal leases until we get a new process figured out. Among her stipulations: Americans should get more bang for their buck on this, and so should the climate.
“We have an obligation to current and future generations to ensure the federal coal program delivers a fair return to American taxpayers,” she said in a January statement, “and takes into account its impacts on climate change.”
Perhaps, then, to throw a bone to the environmental movement (i.e. by making sure not every public hearing about the federal coal leasing program is held in coal country) the BLM held a six-hour-long public forum at the downtown Seattle Sheraton on Tuesday — one of just six hearings like it in the nation.

NATURAL GAS: Enormous Northwest refineries would feed China exclusively

China would build the world's largest methanol refinery at this site in the Port of Tacoma, where an aluminum smelter once stood. Photo courtesy of Northwest Innovation Works.

Northwest Innovation Works guesses its Tacoma plant would use roughly 10,000 gallons [of water] per minute, and perhaps more.

 

NATURAL GAS:  Enormous Northwest refineries would feed China exclusively

David Ferris, E&E reporter   EnergyWire: Tuesday, November 17, 2015

SEATTLE -- China is seeking to tap the flood of cheap natural gas coming from the interior of North America by converting it to methanol at three huge refineries in Washington and Oregon.

The processing plants, collectively called Northwest Innovation Works, have received little attention despite their head-snapping impact:

• The refineries could increase demand for natural gas in the Pacific Northwest by 40 percent.

• They would more than triple the size of the fast-growing U.S. methanol industry.

• With an estimated $7 billion price tag, the refineries would be one of the largest investments ever by China in new U.S. manufacturing.

• The largest plant, planned for Tacoma, could use more water than all the residential customers of the city's public utility district combined.

"This is really a cross-Pacific collaboration," said Simon Zhang, the project's CEO and a former official with BP who is based in Shanghai. "It's very unique in that it brings a benefit to both sides of the Pacific very clearly."

However, the plan is being viewed warily by Pacific Northwest environmental groups, which have proved effective at slowing a long list of proposals to deliver coal, oil and natural gas from the continent's midsection to hungry markets in Asia.

"They fit into the pattern of more fossil-fuel infrastructure built on the Columbia that we have concerns about," said Brett VandenHeuvel, the executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper. Two of the three refineries would sit on the banks of the Columbia River.

The Chinese proposal, first made public last year, is different from other projects that would export raw fossil fuels. First, the end goal is methanol, a crucial building block of plastic and many other materials of modern life. Second, China would be the sole recipient.

Third is that it aims to lower greenhouse gas emissions in China, while raising them to a lesser degree on American shores. China is the world's largest producer and consumer of methanol, and it manufactures almost all of it from coal, which creates a great deal of carbon emissions.

Reducing carbon emissions across industries is an increasingly urgent goal for China, which will be a key player at the Paris climate talks at the end of this month. In September, China announced it would establish a carbon-trading market by 2017.

The Pacific Northwest venture claims that using natural gas instead would reduce emissions by 70 percent, and that it will employ a new technique that reduces the carbon footprint even further.
Northwest Innovation Works says the three refineries would create 3,000 construction jobs and 460 permanent jobs. It could spawn new customers for natural gas in the Pacific Northwest, where industrial jobs have been on the wane. The proposal has received an enthusiastic endorsement from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D).

The factories would also use enormous quantities of water, an obvious selling point for China and a potential flashpoint in the Pacific Northwest. China has chronic water shortages, while Washington and Oregon have lots of it -- though that supply is in question as climate change reduces the region's snowpack.

Two of the refineries would sit on opposite banks of the Columbia River, one in Clatskanie, Ore., about an hour's drive northwest of Portland, and the other at the Port of Kalama in Washington state. Both would produce about 5,000 metric tons of methanol a day, which would put them on par with the world's largest methanol plants.

But both would be dwarfed by a third proposed refinery at Tacoma, a busy industrial port a half-hour south of Seattle. Double the size of the other two, it would be the largest methanol refinery ever built.

 

Cheap gas fires up U.S. methanol

The new refineries would bring an even steeper growth curve to an already fast-growing methanol industry in the United States.

Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol or wood alcohol, is a precursor to hundreds of products, from plastics to fabrics to paints to windshield wiper fluid. The Washington and Oregon projects, like other plants, would combine natural gas with steam and heat to make a synthesis gas of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen. That gas is heated and compressed and run over a catalyst to make a crude methanol, and then it is distilled with water.

The resulting methanol -- colorless, flammable, and a liquid at atmospheric temperature -- would be shipped to China, where it would be converted into olefins, such as ethylene and propylene, and used to make a range of products.....   read more here

Oil Industry's devastating alternative to the Clean Power Plan

The Oil Industry's devastating alternative to the Clean Power Plan

Nick Abraham editor Oil Check Northwest 
 
August 6th - Earlier this week, President Obama announced its long awaited Clean Power Plan, and the new rules were met with plenty of fanfare from all of us that want clean air to breathe and a healthy climate to live in.

Unsurprisingly, oil and coal companies were not as pleased. They’ve organized an army of front groups, pseudo-think tanks and bought off organizations to attack and cripple the plan.

Locally, “astro-turf” groups like Oregonians for Sound Fuel Policy and the Washington Climate Collaborative are not just attacking action like the Clean Power Plan. They have a widespread agenda to prevent new environmental protections and undercut the Northwest’s progress.

They’ve laid out an alternative to a clean energy future, a Dirty Power Plan, for the Northwest. You won’t see them announcing it from podiums or siting down with Katie Couric to talk it over. But make no mistake the fossil fuel industry has a plan for our corner of the world.

1. Sinking Clean Fuels

No surprise here. With a virtual monopoly on what we can fuel up with, oil companies are fighting desperately to prevent either state from enacting a clean fuels program. Despite putting $2 million into Oregon campaigns in 2014 clean fuels prevailed in a landmark victory this past session in Oregon. The legislature mandated that 10% of fuels in the state must come from renewable sources. Not one’s to bow out gracefully,oil companies have put forth 3 different ballot measures for 2016 that would repeal or weaken clean fuels.

In Washington, legislators who received millions from oil companies, almost completely derailed compromise on a new transportation package by trying to preemptively block clean fuels. Senate leaders added a poison pill to the transportation package that said if Governor Inslee implemented clean fuels through executive order all alternative transportation funding would move to road construction. In an effort to keep our state moving (literally), the Governor begrudgingly accepted the deal. Chalk one up for the oil companies.

2. Pipelines Trains and Terminals

The Northwest stands directly between Asian markets and major fossil fuel deposits in Canada and the interior Western US. The fastest, cheapest route to getting their coal, oil and natural gas to export is through our backyard, and that’s exactly what their Dirty Power Plan would propose.
Here’s what that would look like:

- Coal terminals North of Bellingham and Longview WA with over 90 million metric tons of coal total

- Expanded Bakken crude oil refining in Ferndale, Anacortes, Tacoma, Hoquiam, and Vancouver WA as well as Clatskanie OR could move over 1 million barrels/day through our region. That’s 14 oil trains a day

- Natural gas: 140 miles of new pipeline from Sumas WA to Warrenton OR cutting through major population centers along the I-5 corridor as well as a 230 mile line from Malin to Coos Bay OR

3. Keeping Pollution Free

This year, both Oregon and Washington had bills in the legislature to put a price on pollution. In Oregon bill 3470 would have given the state the authority to regulate pollutants much the same way as California currently does, through a carbon cap and trade system. A second bill (3250), would have charged polluters a fee and given that money back to each Oregonian with a dividend check, very similar to Alaska's program that charges oil companies a royalty and gives checks to every resident. (If you've ever had a friend from Alaska they cannot shut up about their "free" check every year)

Unfortunately both bills didn’t make it out of session, as a transportation fight took out all the air in the legislature. Much in the same was as Washington; a provision was added to the transportation package that would cut clean fuels in exchange for a deal. Only this time oil companies were caught red handed writing the bill themselves. After a drawn out battle, the package was killed and clean fuels lived on to fight an other day.

In Washington Governor Inslee laid out a proposal to cut emissions from the state’s largest industrial polluters, a plan that would have given the billions raised to badly need transportation improvements and education funding that’s still in a $3.5 billion hole. This bill, similar to Oregon, was killed after a barrage of attacks from oil-backed legislators.

Not to be out maneuvered, in late July, Governor Inslee announced that the state would be regulating emissions through the Department of Ecology’s mandate. As impressive as this plan is, it still needs backup to be completely effective. To truly have a strong impact, the law will need a way to enforce the regulations. Many predict that a price on pollution will be put on the ballot in 2016 and this would give the Governor’s proposal some much needed teeth.

This week’s Clean Power Plan announcement was a powerful step forward; we couldn’t be happier to see a tough but achievable strategy to cut emissions. But lets not forget that fossil fuel companies have a plan of their own. And the Dirty Power Plan does not paint a bright future for the Northwest.

Nick Abraham editor Oil Check Northwest
nick@oilchecknw.com 

Port of Longview: Do Diligence (Please!)

DO DILIGENCE (PLEASE)

by Dan Leahy

“We've been trying to figure out what they have in mind” - Governor Inslee

Associated Press, June 10, 2015, The Olympian

In April, 2015, thanks to a public records request by the Columbia River Keeper, Washingtonians learned of crude oil refinery proposed on the Columbia River at the Port of Longview.

The documents made available by the Columbia River Keeper include 1) an overview of the refinery project (headed “Riverside Refining LLC”) presented to the Port of Longview, and 2) a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The MOU was dated July 2014 and signed by Lou Soumas. He was identified as the CEO of Riverside Energy, Inc.

According to the documents, Riverside Energy would own and develop a refinery to be supplied from the Bakken Shale oil fields. Crude oil would arrive in 100 to120 car unit trains at the rate one train every three days. The refinery would produce low-sulfur diesel oil, gasoline and jet fuel. The overview named three individuals as the Riverside “Project Team”: Lou Soumas as CEO, Damon Pistulka as Senior Vice President (SVP) and Chris Efird as Chairman.

Under the MOU, Riverside would have the exclusive right for 180 days to negotiate with the Port of Longview for the use of certain premises, with the intent to enter into a definitive agreement including a 50-year lease by Dec. 31, 2014. The MOU was apparently never signed by the Port of Longview and its current status is unknown. Port of Longview Commissioners haven’t commented directly on the proposal since it was brought to light this past April.

Riverside Energy, Inc or Riverside Energy LLC or ??

Riverside Refining LLC and/or Riverside Energy Inc proposed a partnership with the Port of Longview to site a new crude oil refinery on the banks of the Columbia River. Should the Port agree to this proposal? The answer to that question would require an evaluation of the material facts – something a reasonable person does before entering into a financial transaction.

Is Riverside Energy -- or Riverside Refining -- known in the energy field? Do the company’s CEO and principals have a track record of success in the refinery sector? Do they have the ability to raise financing for the project? To answer these questions, we need to know something about Riverside Energy, Inc. (Or is it Riverside Refining, LLC?) And what does the Project Team of Soumas, Pistulka and Efird bring to the table that would justify taking their refinery proposal seriously?

Since there was nothing in the published documents nor any of the news articles that gave information about these individuals or about the corporation they headed, I undertook to find out myself. Corporations must register in the state of their incorporation, so I went to the website of the Washington Secretary of State (SOS), which lists registered corporations in Washington.

Nothing called Riverside Energy, Inc. -- or Riverside Refining, LLC -- is registered in Washington State. News coverage of the refinery proposal said that Riverside Energy, Inc hailed from Texas. I looked at filings with the Texas Secretary of State: Riverside Energy Inc. was there – listed as “inactive” with a status of “forfeited existence.” None of the other names showed up.

Since nearly half of all public corporations in the United States are incorporated in Delaware, I looked there and found them. Riverside Refining, LLC, incorporated in 2014, was listed. A “Riverside Energy, Inc.” was incorporated in Delaware in 1992, but is shown as “Closed Corp.”

Since Corporations are Persons . . .

How did Soumas, Pistulka and Efrid relate to these corporate entities – open or closed? Our Washington State SOS shows the “governing persons” for businesses incorporated here. The Delaware Secretary of State doesn’t offer access to such information. According to a corporate registration agent quoted in a Business Day article, Delaware is the state that requires the least amount of information. David Finzer, Chief Executive of Capital Conservator said “Basically, it requires none. Delaware has the most secret companies in the world and the easiest to form.”

Since I was unable to look into the Riverside listings registered in Delaware for the names of the individuals governing them, I started looking up the team members listed on the 2014 refinery project overview: Soumas, Pistulka and Efird.       (continued below)