Outage Sparks New Air Quality Worries

The flames and black smoke that rose from three oil refineries after last week’s Los Angeles blackout have stirred up the debate over how to stem the pollution that comes from burning excess gases.

The Sept. 12 blackout caused three Wilmington refineries to shut down abruptly. The plants then used open flames or flares as safety measures to reduce pressure. The result produced the eerie spectacle of leaping flames and billowing black smoke captured by television news helicopters.

The vivid pollution has hardened the resolve of some harbor-area residents to press for strong curbs on flaring. Wilmington activist Jesse Marquez took photographs of the flames and is mounting a door-to-door effort to document any health problems residents experienced.

“People here were really worried, really upset,” Marquez said.

Joe Sparano, president of the Western States Petroleum Assn., an industry trade group, said the flares are a safety measure to prevent pressure from building dangerously in the plants. “The flares did exactly what they’re supposed to do,” he said “They did their job splendidly.”

But Southern California air quality regulators believe that curbs are needed on nonemergency flaring, the most common flaring use in the region. They have drafted a proposal they say would remove more than two tons of air pollutants emitted daily by the 27 flares at eight Los Angeles-area refineries and two other plants.

The oil industry is guardedly optimistic about the proposal, but environmental activists claim that recent revisions weakened it so much that they cannot support it.

Although last week’s flaring was a one-day curiosity for most Angelenos, it’s a familiar sight at refineries. The flames emerge from tall stacks designed to vent gases. Pilot lights at the top of the stacks ignite the gases to prevent them from wafting into nearby neighborhoods.

Harbor-area residents fear the practice close to their homes is releasing dangerous amounts of chemicals into the air. The area also gets air pollution from ships, trucks and trains moving cargo in and out of the port complex.

Flaring can lead to the release of sulfur oxides, hydrocarbon gases, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Air regulators are focusing on sulfur oxides, which can cause breathing problems, aggravate asthma and chronic bronchitis and mix with other pollutants to create a more potent health risk.

The eight refineries in southern Los Angeles County make up the largest cluster of them on the West Coast, with three in Wilmington alone.

The forced shutdown of the ConocoPhillips, Equilon and Valero-Ultramar refineries last week was expected to reduce gasoline supplies statewide by at least 8%, according to the California Energy Commission.

Flaring at Los Angeles refineries emitted two tons of sulfur oxides each day in 2003, or as much as all large diesel trucks in Southern California, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates air quality in the region.

Air quality district records show that most area refineries reduced sulfur oxide emissions significantly between 2001 and 2003, dropping from 1,793 tons to 735 tons annually.

Amounts vary widely among refineries.

Flares at the two ConocoPhillips refineries in Wilmington and Carson together produced 496 tons of sulfur oxide emissions in 2003. The next largest amounts: 121 tons at Valero-Ultramar in Wilmington, 75.6 tons at the BP refinery in Carson and 23.7 tons at Shell’s Equilon refinery in Wilmington. ConocoPhillips has agreed to install a vapor recovery system to sharply reduce its emissions, an air district spokeswoman said.

The air district conducted tests in Wilmington during last week’s flaring, with most samples showing hydrocarbon concentrations “well within expected levels.” But heightened levels of hydrogen sulfide, a gas that smells like rotten eggs, were found downwind of the ConocoPhillips refinery, in an amount that could produce reports of headaches and nausea, district experts said.

District officials are still investigating the Wilmington flaring. A ConocoPhillips spokesman said Friday that air samples conducted by refinery health and safety staff “registered no readings that would have adverse health effects to our employees, contractors and surrounding neighbors.”

Emergencies like the power outage account for only 4% of flaring at refineries in the Los Angeles area, according to figures from 1999 to 2003 that the air district’s staff analyzed.

That compares to 4% for maintenance, 5% for planned shutdowns and start-ups, 35% for unknown reasons and 45% for nonemergency events that did not require recordkeeping, the staff found.

“Basically they use the flares like a big wastebasket,” said Julia May, a Bay Area environmental consultant working for Communities for a Better Environment, an activist group with offices in Huntington Park and Oakland. She wants the refineries to recycle more of their gases rather than burning them off with flares.

Sparano said the industry turns to flaring as a last resort.

“Refiners don’t flare as a matter of practice because, if nothing else, it’s money up the stack,” he said. “There is a basic premise in every business where you don’t want to waste your product.”

Flaring attracted little attention until the late 1990s.

“It’s like a lot of other things that have slipped through the regulatory cracks,” said Bahram Fazeli, a policy advisor for Communities for a Better Environment.

“There was a community outcry over the fact that there are these big flare events happening, and there’s really no accountability or serious regulatory ability to reduce flaring.”

The industry has been studying how to reduce flaring, said Ron Chittim, senior refining associate at the American Petroleum Institute.

“Just like improvements in a lot of technologies, there have been improvements in flaring technologies,” he said.

The South Coast air district staff began monitoring flaring in 1999. Although emissions have dropped considerably, the staff believes emissions need to be controlled.

In September 2004, the air quality district board directed the staff to draw up a rule. Industry and community representatives have monitored the evolution of that proposed rule in a series of meetings.

That process gets high marks from Sparano at the petroleum association, who has been deeply involved in the talks.

“Refiners have not fought having a rule. We have been embedded in the process,” he said. “This is one of the most intense and effective collaborations that I’ve seen for a long time.”

The rule would add more monitoring requirements and require certain improvements, such as video cameras to record flaring. Each refinery would be assigned a specific standard to meet in reducing flaring.

It would cut emissions of all pollutants at county refineries, with daily sulfur oxide emissions dropping to 1.5 tons by 2006 and 0.7 tons by 2010.

Some community and environmental activists, however, say they want the district to devise a rule similar to one adopted in July by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District

That rule requires each refinery to draw up a plan showing how it will reduce emissions. A similar provision was dropped from the proposed South Coast rule this summer, riling environmentalists.

May, of Communities for a Better Environment, is also concerned that refineries would be allowed to flare for “essential operational needs,” which she dismisses as a grab bag of excuses that provides refineries with a major loophole.

But an air quality district official involved in designing the rule says that requiring each refinery to design a plan would be cumbersome and difficult to enforce.

Sparano declined to discuss specific concerns his group has with the proposed rule, saying he does not want to negotiate in public.

But Fazeli said the current version is fraught with loopholes. “We cannot support it in its current form,” he said.

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Flaring up

During last week’s blackout, some Angelenos were worried by large flames and smoke rising from refinery stacks that are designed to be relatively smokeless. Here is what happens in emergencies:

1. Excess pressure forces gases through spring-loaded valves and into a network of pipes.

2. Pressure builds and forces the flammable gases to break through the water seal and flow to the stack.

3. Pilot lights ignite the gases. A large release of gases, as happened during the blackout, produces flame and smoke.

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Source: Western States Petroleum Assn.

Graphics reporting by Cheryl Brownstein-Santiago