City officials and experts hear public comment on Chevron refinery repair

While City Manager Bill Lindsay said Wednesday he’s still not ready to issue permits to allow Chevron to begin replacing the pipes that failed in the Aug. 6 fire, the city held a public meeting Wednesday evening to offer information about and a chance to comment on the debate over what type of material to use in the pipes.

The meeting came a day after the city’s metallurgical consultants backed the piping material choice proposed by Chevron to repair the No. 4 crude unit at the Richmond Refinery.

Jim McLaughlin and David Hendrix were hired to analyze the materials report submitted by Chevron. In letters sent to the City Manager on Tuesday, both agreed that Chevron’s basis for using 9-chrome alloy in the refinery repairs was in compliance with industry standards and fit the requirements of the California Fire Code.

At the meeting Wednesday, County Supervisor John Gioia said that findings from the metallurgical consultants failed to address the more important issue of whether the piping material that Chevron is recommending is the best material to avoid another accident.

The reports are “limited to whether the piping is industry standard and meets the fire code,” he said. “Which is a very different issue from what has the lowest risk to avoid catastrophic failure.”

McLaughlin said that he was supporting the use of 9-chrome steel over the 300-series alternative not only because it met industry standards but also because of its immunity to stress corrosion cracking.

Approximately 150 people were in attendance in the standing-room only City Council chambers. Representatives of state and local elected officials and city councilmembers were among the audience.

On the panel with McLaughlin and Lindsay were Senior Planner Lina Velasco, Fire Marshall Terry Harris, Fire Chief Michael Banks, and Director of Planning and Building Richard Mitchell.

Wednesday’s meeting opened with an overview of the permit process from Lindsay, Velasco and Harris.

Lindsay said that a “more detailed analysis” was needed by the city before further permits for high temperature sulfidation application would be issued to Chevron. Lindsay said that a temporary hold on approving permits for this process has been in place since Nov. 16.

Since the Aug. 6 fire, more than 50 permits have been issued by the city for the No. 4 Crude Unit and the Cat Cooling Tower Repair of the Richmond Refinery.

Following the permit report, McLaughlin provided background on metallurgy, a summary of Chevron’s technical analysis submitted to the city and also his own findings.

McLaughlin also addressed concerns over a BP Cherry Point refinery fire that occurred in Washington in February.

The piping in the BP Cherry Point refinery that failed was 9-chrome alloy and was damaged by sulfidation corrosion, but McLaughlin still sided with the choice of 9-chrome steel saying, “I agree with Chevron’s conclusion that the BP Cherry Point incident involving 9-chrome does not discount its use in its service in the Richmond crude unit.”

Chevron Senior Business Manager Barbara Smith then presented a slideshow with general information about the refinery and the crude unit where the fire occurred.

“We want this community to know that we take the incident that happened on Aug. 6 very seriously,” Smith said. It doesn’t reflect who we are. It doesn’t live up to the expectations that we have for ourselves.”

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said she is disappointed in the time it’s taken Chevron to respond to requests for documents from the city and from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.

In an email to the Mayor on Wednesday, Daniel Horowitz, the managing director of the CSB, said that Chevron had yet to respond to 42 document requests, which were now more than 10 days overdue.

Originally, the City Council had planned on waiting for the CSB to release its findings on the refinery fire before before holding a public meeting, but at the Dec. 4 council meeting Mayor McLaughlin announced that the report, which was expected to be presented in mid-December, would be pushed back into mid-January.

“There are 42 documents they have not yet responded to,” McLaughlin said. “So in terms of response and transparency, I have concerns.”

Earlier Wednesday, Chevron’s General Manager Nigel Hearne sent an email to the mayor and others to respond to accusations that Chevron is trying to push through permits without promptly responding to the CSB’s requests.

“In responding to this flood of information requests, Chevron U.S.A has produced approximately 300,000 pages of documents in only four months,” Hearne wrote. “To date, we have provided complete responses to more than half of the CSB’s subpoena requests, produced according to the agency’s own prioritization.”

Approximately 40 members of the public spoke at the meeting. Lindsay compiled their questions to be answered at the end of the meeting.

A substantial number of the public speakers spoke from past and current experiences as a refinery employee or cited their credentials in engineering.

Pipefitter Carlos Diaz said he has been contracting with Chevron off and on for 25 years and said that the Richmond refinery is one of the safest he’s seen.

“They maintain a level of safety that’s unparalleled to elsewhere in the United States,” Diaz said.

Diaz said he doesn’t attribute the explosion to malfunctioning parts or the use of inferior materials.

“It’s all about the fact that someone redlines something and a pipe should have been replaced a long time ago,” Diaz said. “That’s the elephant in the room that no one is talking about.”

In addition to people concerned about the overall safety of the refinery, others spoke about their concern over possibly losing their jobs at the refinery because of a hold on the permit-approval process.

In a letter to Lindsay sent on Dec. 11, Gary Beevers, the vice president of the United Steelworkers union, expressed his organization’s backing for the use of 9-chrome piping and the “prompt granting of a permit for the reconstruction of the process unit” at the refinery.

Kathleen Sullivan, member of the Human Rights and Human Relations Commission was concerned that the comments from the public represented a rift between workers concerned about their jobs and people concerned about their personal health and the safety of the refinery. “We don’t want to have people be laid off and we want to be safe,” Sullivan said. “We’ve got some good information that has been communicated on both sides.”

The meeting went past 10 p.m., and afterward Lindsay said that he felt the meeting accomplished the goals of giving the public “access to the experts.”

Lindsay said that he did not have a timetable for a decision on the permit process.