Chevron to appeal ruling on Richmond refinery
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 9, 2009
(07-08) 18:40 PDT -- Chevron Corp. will appeal a judge's order that it halt an upgrade to its Richmond refinery and revise its environmental review, a ruling that the company blames for causing more than a thousand layoffs.
"We think the judge was wrong," refinery manager Mike Coyle said Tuesday, as he showed off two huge furnaces at the center of the dispute.
Coyle said the furnaces are designed to create hydrogen that will be used to extract sulfur from crude oil as part of the refining process. They would replace older furnaces that continue to serve the refinery.
But last week Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga said Chevron had not adequately described the project or its environmental consequences and ordered construction halted until the company revised its documents.
Standing on a hillside overlooking the multistory furnaces, Coyle said that of roughly 1,300 construction workers who had been erecting the steel structures, all but a hundred or so have been let go.
"This is the worst time to be stopping a project like this," he said.
A few miles away, Richmond native Dennis Roos said he was among the construction workers who got laid off after the court order was issued.
"That was an unexpected downturn," said the 49-year-old electrician, who had thought the project would last for 15 more months.
But Richmond resident Torm Nompraseurt, 54, one of the plaintiffs who sought the court order, blamed the oil company for the layoffs.
"Chevron is the one that took the risk and did not file a good environmental review," said Nompraseurt, an organizer with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. "We have a right to know what is going to happen in our community."
Coyle said Chevron documented its plans in accordance with the law during a three-year permitting process, overseen primarily by the city of Richmond, that culminated last fall with the issuance of permits to build the hydrogen furnaces and some related facilities.
Coyle said the new furnaces will allow Chevron to process oil with a higher sulfur content - which refiners call "sour crude" as opposed to low-sulfur or sweet crude, which is likely to become harder and costlier to obtain over time.
Not entirely so, said Greg Karras, a senior scientist with Communities for a Better Environment, another plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Karras said the upgrade could allow Chevron to process so-called heavy crude, which has high concentrations of metals like mercury and selenium. He said processing heavy crude could result in more harmful byproducts being vented into the air.
"You've got this dirty-in, dirty-out problem," Karras said.
Coyle insisted that Chevron's opponents were wrong.
"This project is not about refining more heavy crude," he said. "We are preparing ourselves for the future to refine more sour crude."
But Zuniga said the environmental documents did not make clear whether the upgrades will allow Chevron to process more heavy crude oil and with what impact, and ordered the company to refile its paperwork.
Chevron has not yet actually filed its appeal, which will seek an expedited review. It is unclear how long it will take for the dispute to be resolved and what Chevron will ultimately do.
Meanwhile, Roos, the laid-off electrician, said he must scrape by on unemployment checks after having recently purchased a home.
"The little money I was able to save will rapidly be gone," he said.
Nompraseurt, the environmentalist, said Chevron is profitable enough to meet environmental standards without sacrificing jobs.
"They should not be pitting us against each other," he said.
E-mail Tom Abate at tabate@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/BU8E18L6UK.D...
