Over the objections of environmentalists, Contra Costa County supervisors today gave Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66 permission to start producing liquid biofuels at the oil refineries the two companies respectively own in Martinez and Rodeo.
The Martinez refinery, which at one point produced almost 18% of the fossil fuel consumed in California, was idled in late 2020 because of pandemic-related revenue losses, resulting in a mass layoff of more than 700 workers.
Now, instead of refining crude oil, Marathon soon will begin processing vegetable oils and animal fats into renewable diesel, and hire 1,400 people to do the job.
Phillips 66 will do the same at the Rodeo refinery, at a much higher scale: the plant will churn an average of 80,000 barrels of feedstock each day into fuels, compared to about 48,000 barrels per day at the Martinez refinery.
Both plans were separately approved in March by the county Planning Commission, but more than a dozen Bay Area environmental groups subsequently appealed the projects. On Tuesday, both plans were separately reviewed by the supervisors in back-to-back hearings.
The environmental groups’ leaders told the supervisors that biofuels production would strain food supplies and contribute to deforestation — practices they argued are just as destructive to the climate as burning fossil fuels.
But the supervisors called the projects a compromise that could help the county reach its target reduction of carbon emissions by 2030.
“If they wanted to, they could go right back to refining gasoline,” Supervisor Candace Andersen said of Marathon during the first hearing. “And I know a lot of people in the community would love to see that happen given the very, very high gas prices we have right now in the United States.
Andersen said she thinks Marathon’s plan” will benefit us as a community, and continue to provide jobs while reducing the impact on the environment.”
Union workers also showed up in large numbers, urging the board to allow the refineries to switch up their operations.
“When you look at a project of this scale, you see there are early adopters and late adopters,” said Julia McGee, a Solano County resident who previously worked at the Marathon refinery. “We have the opportunity to be on the side of early adopters to reduce emissions and reduce our dependency on fossil fuel.”
Other speakers pointed out the companies would set up their operations elsewhere if the board didn’t allow them to produce biofuels.
“Do we want to allow a technology that is going to benefit us in the future to go somewhere where it is not heavily regulated, where furnaces are not run with the tight compliance that they are here?” said a man who identified himself as a longtime worker at the Martinez refinery.
Whether production of biofuels creates significantly more or fewer emissions than the refinement of crude oil is still being debated.
The California Air Resources Board has determined that biofuels meet its standard for what constitutes low-carbon fuel, and that the transportation and distribution of biofuels creates far fewer emissions than crude oil.
Some environmental advocates questioned the board’s finding, noting that oil companies have long created false narratives behind supposed “green-energy” initiatives.
Jackie Mann, co-founder of 350 Contra Costa, warned the supervisors not to buy into the “big oil” narrative and settle for a “bad-energy solution.”
“We don’t want to be on the wrong side of history,” Mann said.
They also pointed to an ongoing investigation into Phillips 66 by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, two of whose directors are Conta Costa supervisors John Gioia and Karen Mitchoff.
The air district’s staff last fall began looking into whether the company had the necessary permits to begin processing small volumes of soy bean oil into biofuels. There was no mention of the investigation in the company’s environmental review of the project.
“We think it’s important to wait on approval of this project until the investigation is complete,” said Ann Alexander, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
But the supervisors praised the proposals, saying the companies had fine-tuned the details and sufficiently planned to reduce the environmental impacts — such as carbon emissions and odor.
Marathon representatives have said production of biofuels could begin at the Martinez refinery sometime this year. Last fall, the company agreed to pay the air district a $2 million settlement over a slew of air quality violations committed by Tesoro, the plant’s former owner.
Source: www.mercurynews.com