City Council Receives Presentation on Refinery Investigations Nearly Two Years After Spent Catalyst Release

Reports detail cause of November 2022 accident and safety culture of PBF Energy's Martinez refinery, along with recommendations to improve safety; also, Scales-Preston, Campbell clinch election races

Election update: The Contra Costa Elections Office released updated ballot counts Wednesday afternoon, resulting in two more local races that now can be safely called. Shanelle Scales-Preston will win the race for Contra Costa County District 5 supervisor; she now leads Mike Barbanica, 52% to 48%, with nearly all votes counted. Also, Logan Campbell will defeat incumbent Carlos Melendez for the Area 1 seat on the Martinez Unified School District Board of Trustees; he leads 53% to 47%. Finally, MUSD’s Measure O construction bond looks increasingly likely to pass as it now stands at 55.8% yes votes (55% are required); its margin has continued to grow with each new vote tally. The most recent vote counts for all county races can be found at the following link: https://www.contracostavote.gov/wp-content/uploads/ElectionSummaryReportRPT-91.pdf

The following post by freelance writer Tom Lochner is made possible through the financial support of paid subscribers and other donors to the newsletter. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 a month or $50 annually if not already to support more local news coverage. It is being made available in full to paid subscribers only.

By Tom Lochner

The Martinez City Council last week received two final reports on a toxic release at the Martinez Refining Co., just shy of two years after it occurred.

On Thanksgiving night, Nov. 24, 2022, and continuing into the next morning, a “spent catalyst” release at the PBF Energy-owned refinery along Pacheco Boulevard spewed about 24 tons of dust laden with toxic metals onto downtown Martinez and surrounding communities mostly to the west, northwest and southwest, as far away as parts of Benicia, El Sobrante, Crockett and Hercules. Refinery officials were unaware of the release when it occurred, and only learned about it the following morning when some residents reported finding dust that turned out to be spent catalyst ash on cars and other outdoor surfaces.

On Nov. 6, Nicole Heath, the director of Hazardous Materials Programs at Contra Costa Health, presented to the City Council the finalized Independent Investigation - Root Cause Analysis and Safety Culture Assessment reports, both produced by consultant Scott Berger & Associates. The reports had previously been presented to the MRC Oversight Committee and the county Ad Hoc ISO/CWS (Industrial Safety Ordinance/Community Warning System) committee.

The finalized reports include comments and responses to comments submitted to the earlier versions by members of the public and the oversight committee, which is composed of Heath; representatives of MRC management (1) and labor (1); the cities of Martinez (1) and Benicia (1); and seven community representatives, from Martinez (4), Pacheco (1), El Sobrante (1) and another, unspecified unincorporated area (1).

The next steps, Heath reported, include 22 action items for MRC to complete under the Independent Investigation - Root Cause Analysis report, related to "deficiencies" such as in the assessment of the risk of catalyst releases from the refinery, and how the refinery is following procedures and managing changes in procedures. Suggested focus areas include training for catalytic cracking unit (CCU) personnel; empowerment of employees to exercise stop- or pause-work authority in unsafe or abnormal situations; and how worker fatigue is managed at employee levels higher than hourly workers.

Berger had told the MRC Oversight Committee in August that "a key employee with a lot of expertise" worked "excessive hours" – more than 20 hours per day over four days – starting in the days preceding the spent catalyst release; that incident actually originated three days earlier, on Nov. 21, 2022, when an air controller failed, prompting workers to shut down the CCU. When feed was reintroduced into the CCU on Nov. 24, 2022, a device known as a “stripper slide valve” was not in automatic mode as it should have been, and was not closed fast enough manually when reactor pressure surged, culminating in the spent catalyst release.

"We believe that the fatigue of the worker played a role in why the procedure was not followed and why the decision was made to put that slipper slide valve in manual,” Berger told the committee in August.

Heath also cited 11 action items identified in the Safety Culture Report related to the refinery organization's incident investigation approaches; how procedure deviations are managed, including modes of control in those deviations; reliability of monitoring programs in areas other than the pressure equipment; audit findings requiring rapid response amid overly long "complete-by" dates or not completed in the required time frame.