Martinez Environmental Group

12/4/14  at  22:14

Giant plumes of smoke/steam/??? that can be seen from Alhambra High School. The pictures with the wide view were taken from Waterbird Park.

At least 5 calls to the BAAQMD hotline from different individuals but the inspector on duty has chosen not to come to Martinez.

Intense sulfur smell surrounds the refinery…it gave me a killer headache. Hey, wait a minute, steam doesn’t smell like rotten eggs!

There was also a mention of an explosion heard earlier in the evening but there is no proof that it was related.

UPDATE: Still spewing plumes, still sulfur smell at 8:15 AM 12/5/14
No morning callback from BAAQMD

Friday, 28 November 2014 By Isaiah Thompson, ProPublica 

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27700-government-data-sharpens-focus-on-crude-oil-train-routes

The oil boom underway in North Dakota has delivered jobs to local economies and helped bring the United States to the brink of being a net energy exporter for the first time in generations.

But moving that oil to the few refineries with the capacity to process it is presenting a new danger to towns and cities nationwide — a danger many appear only dimly aware of and are ill-equipped to handle.

Much of North Dakota’s oil is being transported by rail, rather than through pipelines, which are the safest way to move crude. Tank carloads of crude are up 50 percent this year from last. Using rail networks has saved the oil and gas industry the time and capital it takes to build new pipelines, but the trade-off is greater risk: Researchers estimates that trains are three and a half times as likely as pipelines to suffer safety lapses.

Indeed, since 2012, when petroleum crude oil first began moving by rail in large quantities, there have been eight major accidents involving trains carrying crude in North America. In the worst of these incidents, in July, 2013, a train derailed at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec and exploded, killing 47 and burning down a quarter of the town. Six months later, another crude-bearing train derailed and exploded in Casselton, North Dakota, prompting the evacuation of most of the town’s 2,300 residents.

See interactive map of the crude-oil train data.

Continue reading →

672, 118 tank cars of oil and/or petroleum from Jan to October 2014

U.S. rail traffic, including carloadings of all commodity types, has increased 4.5% through October 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. Crude oil and petroleum products had the second-biggest increase in carloadings through the first 10 months of this year, with these shipments occurring in parts of the country where there is also strong demand to move coal and grain by rail. In response to shipper concerns over the slow movement of crude oil, coal, grain, ethanol, and propane, federal regulators are closely tracking service among the major U.S. freight railroad companies.

Rail carloadings of oil and petroleum products totaled 672,118 tank cars during January-October 2014, 13.4% higher compared to the same period last year, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR). Rising U.S. crude oil production, particularly in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale formation, where pipeline takeaway capacity is limited in moving the state’s growing oil volumes to market, is one of the main reasons for this increase in rail shipments of petroleum and petroleum products.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tesoro-s-Martinez-refinery-fined-260-000-for-5893816.php