An existing permit allowed only ethanol
Earthjustice has filed a lawsuit alleging that a California air quality agency has granted an illegal and clandestine permit allowing oil trains carrying Bakken crude to transfer their dangerously volatile cargo into oil trucks at a rail yard seven miles from downtown Sacramento.
According to the Sept. 23 complaint, an existing permit allowed only ethanol transfers at the rail yard in McClellan, California. In May, the complaint alleges, the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District quietly modified the Inter-State Oil Company permit with language allowing crude oil transfers at a maximum rate of 20.5 million gallons per quarter.
A “very troubling turn”
Earthjustice attorney Suma Peesapati told MintPress News that the permit was modified to include oil transfers without an environmental review, public hearings, or even a public announcement. And that, Peesapati added, “marks a very troubling turn where the regulators who are supposed to be protecting us are entering into backroom deals with the industry they’re supposed to be regulating.”
The oil and ethanol shipped to McClellan are subsequently trucked to Bay Area refineries, with the closest facility being the Tesoro refinery in Martinez (about 60 miles away). The ethanol, which is used as a gasoline additive, is produced in corn-growing regions. All of the oil is coming from wells in North Dakota and eastern Montana – the Bakken shale oil region.
The oil from that region is more volatile than typical crude, and it’s being extracted so rapidly that there isn’t enough pipeline capacity to carry it away as fast as it’s pumped out of the ground. As a result, the volume of U.S. crude oil shipped by train has been skyrocketing in recent years.