Chevron Fire Investigators Wait For All-Clear Before Refinery Inspection

The Chevron refinery fire in Richmond on August 6D. Ross Cameron / Contra Costa Times/ ZUMA Press

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


This story first appeared on the Guardian website.

Investigators are waiting to see if it is safe to enter a smouldering Chevron oil refinery after it was ravaged by fire, sending plumes across the San Francisco bay area and Californian gasoline prices surging.

Experts warned it could take months to repair the refinery in Richmond, a 2,900-acre facility which refines about 150,000 gallons of gasoline daily, 15% of the state’s daily needs.

Monday evening’s blaze began in a tower and spread to at least three units used to cool water, prompting hundreds of people to seek treatment for respiratory problems and panic buying at the pumps, raising prices 11% in the bay area.

However, initial predictions that prices could exceed $4 per gallon were scaled back because spare capacity in other west coast refineries could fill much, if not all, of the gap.

“There’s room in the system to pick up the slack,” Rob Schlichting of the California Energy Commission told reporters. “The large jump we saw on Wednesday in prices I think was mostly panic buying.”

Chevron was expected to file a structural engineering and environmental report by Friday specifying how investigators could safely enter the facility.

The all-clear would let a team of Chemical Safety Board inspectors — the same which investigated the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – to begin sifting through the charred equipment of a refinery which opened in 1902.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory lists the refinery as one of California’s top emitters of toxic chemicals. It has been cited by San Francisco Bay area regulators for violating air regulations 93 times in the past five years, reported AP. The number increased from 15 violations in 2007 to 23 in both 2010 and 2011.

After the fire residents besieged legal firms — queues snaked around blocks — to register compensation claims.

The fire began after vapour ignited but the cause remained unclear. A second, smaller fire erupted on Wednesday. Chevron issued a statement saying it resulted in “no injuries, presented no immediate threat to the public and was extinguished in minutes.”

The company said the refinery was now partially operating, but did not say how much it was producing, nor the extent of damage and likely duration of repairs.

Fixing water cooling units would take time, Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“They’ve got to rebuild them, and that will take a while. If they work 24/7, it will still take a while. Some of this stuff is not available off the shelf; the parts have to be ordered. They can scour the country, but it’s not a like a car part. You’re not going to fix it in a couple days.”

A 2008 hurricane which closed Gulf coast refineries sent prices in the south east briefly soaring to $5.21 a gallon. Analysts said this week’s surge in prices at California’s gas pumps – they hovered at $3.88 on Thursday – would continue but not as drastically as initially feared.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate