Help us demand the Air District stop reverse its permits to refinery expansion. Join us, Wednesday, September 5th at 8am at 375 Beale Street, San Francisco. Learn more here.
What: Protest at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (the “Air District”)
When: 8 AM Wednesday, September 5, 2018 (Air District Board of Directors Meeting)
Where: 375 Beale Street, San Francisco, CA 94105 (4 blocks from Embarcadero BART)
Bay Area Air Quality Management District staff—whose job it is to ensure healthy air and protect the climate—has approved a fundamental part of the massive San Francisco Refinery tar sands expansion project proposed by Phillips 66. The move comes almost five years after the Air District passed a resolution condemning the KXL pipeline. That resolution warned against the more intensive processing required by tar sands oil, which causes enormous quantities of toxic, criteria and greenhouse gas pollutants to spew from refinery smokestacks. As the 2013 resolution made clear, “any increase” of these pollutants will cause negative impacts on the health of local residents.
The administrative permit which staff just issued to Phillips 66 could expand heavy gas oil hydrocracking at its San Francisco Refinery in Rodeo by 61.3 million gallons per year. This greater hydrocracking capacity will enable the oil company to refine increased quantities of tar sands oil it wants to bring across the San Francisco Bay. Without exactly this type of refinery expansion, Phillips 66’s proposed wharf expansion cannot go forward. Air District staff brandished its rubberstamp for the project on August 16, 2018, without any review by its own Board of Directors, or by the public.
Please join us—impacted community members, regional allies, environmental justice and climate protection groups, First Nations and local Indigenous supporters—to protest this dirty deal!
The heavy-oil processing expansion which the District has approved is an essential part of the refiner’s plan to switch its Rodeo refinery over to imported Canadian tar sands oil. This is a project Phillips 66 has touted to investors, tried to lock in using oil trains, and now seeks to advance by expanding oil imports over its Rodeo Wharf. Tar sands bitumen is the most carbon-intensive, hazardous, and polluting major oil resource on the planet to extract, transport, and refine. This project alone could increase by a factor of 35 times the total volume of Canadian tar sands oil that all refiners in the region import across San Francisco Bay and refine.
But the bad news doesn’t stop here. The Air District’s action also directly attacks one of California’s greatest environmental protections. In issuing the Phillips 66 permit, Air District staff is now intentionally evading mitigation, evaluation, or even disclosure of climate impacts from refinery projects under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because of the state’s cap-and-trade program. It’s citing California’s climate pollution trading scheme as its alibi for refusing to protect our climate from oil pollution.
JOIN US AT THE AIR DISTRICT ON SEPTEMBER 5TH!
When he was Attorney General, Governor Brown championed demands to disclose and mitigate under CEQA the climate impacts from oil projects at the Rodeo and other refineries. As Governor, however, Brown has supported cap-and-trade, and has so far been silent about the Air District’s attack on the CEQA disclosure he once championed.
The attacks don’t stop in Rodeo: On August 7, 2018, the Air District staff revealed an
agreement signed by its Air Pollution Control Officer (APCO) on March 28, 2017, with
Phillips 66, Tesoro (now Marathon), and Valero that commits the District’s APCO to propose and advocate for weakening crucial refinery emission control requirements.
This relentless collusion with the oil industry must stop! Demand that the Air District do its job instead of sabotaging public health and climate protections. No more climate cowardice! No more abandonment of refinery communities! Join us on Wednesday, September 5th!