From 'Decisive Victory' to Disaster: The Topsy-Turvy Year that Culminated in Massive Feb. 1 Refinery Fire at MRC

Landmark lawsuit settlement, intense scrutiny from regulators, and plans for a major "turnaround" project that would define MRC's future all led up to one of worst refinery fires in recent memory

Note to readers: This post has been updated to clarify the nature and purpose of MRC’s Alternative Emission Monitoring System (AEMS).

On Feb. 13, 2024, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) and PBF Energy’s Martinez Refining Co. (MRC) trumpeted in news releases and social media posts a landmark lawsuit settlement in which both seemingly came away victorious. It marked a period in which MRC’s fortunes — and safety record— seemed to rise, only to burn to the ground Feb. 1 with arguably the Bay Area’s most significant refinery accident in over a decade — a fire that raged out of control for hours, injured six workers, and stoked community panic with the highest-level alert through the county’s Community Warning System.

BAAQMD declared the settlement with MRC and Chevron to be a “decisive victory for air quality and public health, resulting in major emission reductions” related to its Rule 6-5, which it described as the most stringent “of its kind in the country” regulating particulate matter emissions at petroleum refineries. MRC, meanwhile, celebrated the fact it was able to settle the suit without having to install a “wet gas scrubber,” which was thought to be the only equipment capable of meeting the emissions reductions required under Rule 6-5, and which was expected to pose both cost (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) and logistical challenges for the refinery, which had said it lacked the space to accommodate one.

Instead, in a development that stunned many who had been closely following the lawsuit against Rule 6-5, MRC — which had been plagued by safety mishaps and community releases since the November 2022 toxic spent catalyst accident— boasted that it had developed new technology capable of meeting the emissions standards without a wet gas scrubber. In settling the lawsuit, MRC referenced an “innovative technical solution to comply with the rule” without installing a wet gas scrubber. Under terms of the settlement, MRC would demonstrate that compliance through what it called an “Alternative Emission Monitoring System (AEMS),” which would monitor the refinery’s particulate emissions on a continuous, rather than quarterly, basis.

Chevron, on the other hand, agreed to install the wet gas scrubber.

Members of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District discuss the lawsuit settlement with MRC and Chevron on Feb. 13, 2024. Then-Martinez City Councilman Mark Ross is seen at far right.

That “innovative technical solution” was to be a key element of the refinery’s major maintenance and overhaul project — called a “turnaround” in refinery parlance — that began in January and was supposed to wrap up in April — before the Feb. 1 fire brought the refinery to a standstill and ushered in a new chapter of community outrage over PBF’s management since buying the facility from Shell in 2020.

Addressing the fire in a Feb. 13 news release announcing the company’s fourth-quarter earnings, PBF Energy CEO Matthew Lucey reiterated the same safety talking points that the Martinez community has heard time and again since the 2022 spent catalyst release that, without public warning, showered surrounding areas with up to 24 tons of heavy metal-laden dust: “We are committed to safe, responsible and reliable operations and earning the trust of the communities in which we operate. By concentrating on safety, reliability and equipment availability, we will put our refineries in position to more effectively capture anticipated market opportunities."

Last year’s lawsuit settlement came amid intense scrutiny and investigation of the refinery’s operations after a problem-plagued 2023, leading to an unannounced inspection by Contra Costa Health, a regularly scheduled triennial audit of the facility by the same agency, and inspections by the California Division of Occupational of Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) of its turnarounds in both 2024 and this year. There was also a “joint civil enforcement action” announced by the Contra Costa District Attorney, BAAQMD, Contra Costa Health and the state Department of Fish and Game in November 2023 in response to the refinery’s spate of accidents and environmental violations — an “action” that has yet to yield any results (the D.A. actually began investigating the refinery in early 2023 over the spent catalyst incident in which MRC failed to activate the Community Warning System).

None of it was enough to prevent the hydrocarbon leak and resulting fire that triggered a rare shelter-in-place advisory and will now be the subject of what are expected to be more intense, months-long investigations.

While a refinery spokesman said categorically this week that the fire was unrelated to the lawsuit settlement or Rule 6-5, MRC Manager Daniel Ingram repeatedly mentioned in presentations to the Martinez City Council last year that work to implement this “innovative technical solution” would take place in early 2025 during the refinery’s scheduled turnaround on its fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) unit. MRC posted on its Facebook page on Jan. 6 that the maintenance project would serve as “a major investment in our refinery’s future.”

Greg Karras, the former senior scientist for refinery watchdog group Communities for a Better Environment and now an independent consultant on refinery operations, said in an interview Sunday that whether the Feb. 1 fire was connected in some way to the work to comply with the unique terms of the MRC lawsuit settlement would be “a necessary question to ask” in the upcoming root cause investigation of the incident.

“If the investigation is going to happen, it’s going to have to address that question,” he said.

When BAAQMD and MRC announced the lawsuit settlement on Feb. 13, 2024, the so-called technical solution was largely cloaked in mystery. Neither the Air District nor the refinery went into any detail about how exactly this new technology would work — or how a refinery that had so struggled to carry out daily operations without accidental releases and incidents since Thanksgiving night of 2022 could be trusted to implement and execute it safely. But in a presentation to the Martinez City Council on April 3, 2024 in which council members asked specific questions about the technology, Ingram elaborated on the concept and explained how MRC would be “making some improvements to some specific pieces of equipment that will allow us to continuously comply with Rule 6-5.”

The Feb. 1 fire originated with the refinery’s cat feed hydrotreater, a device used in refining to remove sulfur and other impurities from “feedstock” before it is sent to the FCC, which is the primary source of particulate emissions. It, therefore, can play a key role in reducing such emissions.

MRC spokesman Brandon Matson said Wednesday that the upgrades needed to bring the cat feed hydrotreater into compliance with Rule 6-5 actually took place in 2021, and the work being performed on the unit when the leak and fire occurred was unrelated to any of the provisions of the rule or lawsuit settlement. He said the planned equipment improvements related to Rule 6-5 during the 2025 turnaround had not yet commenced when the fire occurred.

The deadline to comply with Rule 6-5 in the lawsuit settlement is July 2026, and MRC also is required to eventually show compliance using a continuous monitoring system for particulate emissions instead of periodic quarterly stack testing — apparently a reflection of the need to ensure that the new “solution” it had developed would actually work as advertised.

When MRC declared that it could comply with Rule 6-5 without installing the gas scrubber — which removes particulate matter on the “back end” of the refining process — it had to come up with a way to accomplish the same result on the “front end.”

While Ingram noted that some enhancements would be made to the electrostatic precipitators currently used in lieu of a wet gas scrubber to remove particulate matter from the FCC, much of the focus would be on “front end” refining.

In response to a question from Councilwoman Debbie McKillop at the April council meeting about how the technology would work, Ingram responded: “You can do things on the front end, in terms of the feed that you send that unit that it processes to make sure that you reduce the contaminants in that feed, sulfur as an example. If you reduce the sulfur that you send to that unit, you don’t have to worry about how you treat and deal with that sulfur as it makes its way through the unit and out the back end.”

Ingram went on to say that he anticipated MRC making a $60 million investment in the first quarter of this year as part of the upgrades necessary to comply with Rule 6-5.

“The turnaround merely provided an opportunity to address certain equipment that will be necessary for Rule 6-5 compliance, but this equipment was not the driver of the turnaround,” Matson clarified in a statement Wednesday, noting that the turnaround of the FCC had been planned before the lawsuit settlement.

The fire did not affect equipment that was planned to be modified for Rule 6-5 compliance, Matson added, and wouldn’t impact the timeline for the refinery to comply with required emissions reductions by the July 2026 deadline. As of Wednesday, however, it remained uncertain when the refinery would resume normal operations after being largely shut down following the fire.

In a corporate filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week, PBF said of the fire, “At this time, the cost of repairs, and the length of the shutdown arising from the incident cannot be reasonably estimated. As such, our forward-looking guidance excludes Martinez operations beyond Jan. 31, 2025.”

Smoke from the Feb. 1 fire as seen from Mountain View Park.

Before the settlement announcement on Feb. 13, 2024, it was thought that technical limitations to what MRC and Chevron could accomplish with their current equipment on both the front and back ends of FCC processing would fall short of the reductions called for in Rule 6-5 — making a wet gas scrubber the only possible solution. That was at the heart of the lawsuit that both Chevron and MRC filed against BAAQMD against the new rule (the Valero refinery in Benicia already utilizes a wet gas scrubber).

When BAAQMD explored less-stringent standards for particulate emissions reductions in a March 2021 staff report, it mentioned hydrotreatment and electrostatic precipitator improvements at MRC as an option. The BAAQMD board, however, ultimately chose the more-stringent standards when it approved the rule that year. MRC and Chevron promptly sued to stop the rule from taking effect.

While a lawsuit settlement was widely expected at some point, the big surprise was MRC’s alternative to a wet gas scrubber, which BAAQMD said would nevertheless lead to an 80% reduction in particulate matter emissions from its FCC — meeting the requirements of Rule 6-5.

“We thank our employees and consultants whose ingenuity and hard work led to an innovative technical solution to comply with the rule, as well as the BAAQMD for working constructively with us to arrive at our mutually desired goal of improving air quality in the Bay Area,” MRC said on its Facebook page in announcing the lawsuit settlement last Feb. 13. “We look forward to continuing to safely manufacture products that fuel the economy and help make modern life possible.”

The reference to safety would be a recurring theme through the remainder of 2024.

At the same April council meeting where Ingram discussed plans for equipment improvements needed to comply with Rule 6-5 during its 2025 turnaround work, he also explained to council members MRC’s decision to delay its 2024 turnaround project by a few months, amid heightened scrutiny from regulators, to ensure that it would be executed safely.

One of the primary reasons for the delay in the 2024 turnaround, Ingram told the council, “was to allow our organization extra time to go back and review all the execution plans associated with that turnaround, make sure our safety plans were well-documented, ready to go, make sure our flare-minimization plan was as solid as it could be and was ready to go, as well as other things associated with the turnaround.”

In response to a question from Councilman Satinder Malhi about whether regulatory agencies were reviewing the refinery’s 2024 turnaround plans, Ingram referenced a review by Cal/OSHA and said that agency also would have staff on site during the work. Ingram elaborated in a September update to the City Council that the Cal/OSHA audit stemmed from state legislation that empowered the agency to select individual refineries to inspect during their turnarounds each year.

Matson confirmed Thursday that Cal/OSHA was again auditing the refinery during this year’s turnaround. That audit has now apparently morphed into an investigation of the Feb. 1 fire. The refinery said Feb. 7 that the agency had “restricted the scene of the extinguished fire to incident investigators under a preservation order.”

As of late Thursday, Cal/OSHA had not responded to email requests sent this week seeking comment on the matter.

Ingram also said in his April City Council presentation that Contra Cost Health had asked for documentation related to its flare-minimization plan ahead of the 2024 turnaround as part of its unannounced inspection (the refinery had experienced a number of unplanned flaring events during 2023, and flaring tends to occur more frequently during turnarounds when specific units are shut down and restarted). According to the Contra Costa Health Hazmat Notification Dashboard, MRC had reported 13 flaring incidents, as of Wednesday evening, since the Feb. 1 fire, all categorized as Level 0 or Level 1 in which no off-site impacts are anticipated.

Ingram also highlighted, at both the April and September council updates, the refinery’s renewed commitment to safety, including doubling the size of its training department to address the large turnover in the refinery’s workforce since PBF bought it, and creating new roles dedicated to operations, health and safety. In its September presentation, MRC officials touted the refinery’s “Operation Comeback” and “Goal Zero” initiatives focused on enhanced training and process safety, and pointed to data indicating that it currently ranked among the safest refineries in the nation.

The 2024 turnaround project was completed without any major incidents, and the refinery made it through the rest of the year without a repeat of the mishaps that plagued it throughout the end of 2022 and all of 2023. As the refinery geared up for its 2025 turnaround, Ingram said it would be the biggest yet under PBF — and perhaps in the history of the refinery — “in total scope, manpower and activities that will be going on.” There was no talk of delaying this one to ensure safety, however, as it had the one a year earlier. The major turnaround began at the beginning of the year as scheduled, only to be derailed a few weeks later by the Feb. 1 fire.

While Cal/OSHA was back in Martinez monitoring MRC’s activities this year, Contra Costa Health and the Air District were not involved in scrutinizing the refinery’s turnaround plans to ensure that they went off without a hitch.

In November, the Air District issued a temporary permit allowing MRC to complete upgrades during the 2025 turnaround that “would ultimately enable compliance with Rule 6-5,” BAAQMD Executive Officer/Air Pollution Control Officer Philip Fine said in response to an inquiry from Martinez News and Views. He added that the agency “does not review turnaround maintenance plans at refineries, nor do we evaluate them for safety, as that is beyond our authority.”

Fine said the Air District had no information suggesting that the Feb. 1 fire was related to the work to comply with the Rule 6-5 lawsuit settlement.

“While MRC is required to conduct turnaround work in compliance with all applicable standards and regulatory requirements, including both environmental requirements and safety requirements, the Air District is not the process safety regulator,” Fine said.

In a statement Wednesday, Contra Costa Health also said it did not review MRC’s turnaround plans. It wrote:

There is not a regulatory requirement for turnaround plans to be submitted to Contra Costa Health nor do we review or approve specific turnaround plans as part of our regulatory authority. Contra Costa Health does evaluate the management systems in place at the refinery to ensure that process safety standards exist for all work that is performed by either refinery staff and/or their contractors. It is the expectation of Contra Costa Health that all process safety standards implemented by the refinery are followed for any work that is conducted regardless of the purpose for that work.

County Supervisor John Gioia, who sits on both the Air District board and the Board of Supervisors’ ad hoc Industrial Safety Ordinance committee, said in an email Wednesday that after looking further into the matter, he learned that the California Accidental Release Prevention Program and the county’s Industrial Safety Ordinance “do not grant us authority to review turnaround plans.”

Meanwhile, negotiations continue between the refinery and various regulatory agencies, including the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office and BAAQMD, to settle past health and environmental violations by the refinery, including the spent catalyst release. But judging from PBF Energy’s annual report issued Thursday, the company is little concerned about the impact of any fines and penalties on its bottom line. Here is what it wrote under a section titled “Legal Proceedings”:

For the spent catalyst, coke dust, flaring, brush fire, and other incidents, no penalties have been assessed to date by the various agencies but there have been settlement communications with the CCC District Attorney and the BAAQMD. We presently believe the outcomes will not have a material impact on our financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.

During MRC’s presentations throughout 2024 to the City Council, safety was top of mind in comments by council members, with optimism over recent signs of progress tempered by concern over the spate of incidents that had dominated the recent past.

“I just want to reiterate what I believe should be a shared goal of all us, putting safety first — safety of our workers, safety of our community and the safety of the surrounding community,” Malhi told Ingram in April. “I appreciate the presentation, the investments you have said, but words are not enough. Everyone will see by the action.”