PBF Energy Touts Recent Refinery Safety Initiatives in Report to City Council

Employees, union officials speak in support of MRC's role in community as refinery works to improve image tarnished by several mishaps; public meeting on spent catalyst report to be held Thursday

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By Tom Lochner

PBF Energy’s Martinez Refining Co. made an upbeat presentation to the City Council on April 3 touting recent and upcoming safety measures and capital improvements, in an ongoing campaign to spruce up its image tarnished by a yearlong series of mishaps, starting with a spent catalyst release in November 2022 that showered 20-plus tons of toxic metal dust on surrounding communities.

In the audience at the "First Quarter 2024 Refinery Update" PowerPoint presentation was a contingent of refinery employees and officials of several trade unions, who spoke during the ensuing public comment session, praising the refinery's work environment and good pay, commitment to science, and dedication to the safety of its employees and contractors and the greater Martinez community.

The generally positive presentation, and support expressed for the refinery during public comment, came in stark contrast to MRC’s last appearance before the council in December, when it was lambasted by the public and council members for the most recent refinery incidents, including an unplanned flaring event that released strong odors into the community, that had rattled the community.

Refinery Manager Daniel Ingram led off Wednesday’s presentation with a "health, safety and environmental" segment, noting that it did not feature a slide on the subject.

"If a slide was up there for health and safety, what you would see is a bunch of zeros, which is excellent," Ingram explained. "We had zero employee recordable injuries, zero contractor recordable injuries, and zero Tier 1 process safety events," he continued.

From an environmental perspective, MRC had "a good quarter," although "not perfect," Ingram said. He cited two brief "opacity events" and "a little bit of flaring" related to an unplanned shutdown, and subsequent restarting, of the refinery's flexicoker (a type of coker, a device that produces petroleum coke, fuel gas and gas oils). 

"Most units can be taken down without flaring – unfortunately not the flexicoker," which exhibits flaring at shutdown and when it is brought back up, Ingram said. Equipment repair took about 35 days.

"Our goal is zero flaring," he added.

Ingram also noted that Contra Costa Health (CCH) and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) conducted an unannounced inspection of the refinery in December to evaluate MRC’s compliance with five process safety programs. "Following a very thorough, professional, multi-week inspection by the two agencies, their inspectors did not identify any areas needing immediate or short-term action," the PowerPoint noted.

In its last update in December, MRC had projected "major turnaround activity" for February, including  "bringing down" some major process units. The refinery has since reevaluated its plans and deferred the turnaround activities to May, primarily to give it extra time to review all of the execution plans associated with that turnaround, especially safety plans, Ingram explained.

So the main focus of this year's first quarter was on training, development and reliability, Ingram said. It included "significant investments in critical refinery utility systems" and the introduction of new technology such as a "simulator," a device that can teach, for example, "how to learn about an emergency shutdown without having to have an emergency shutdown;" MRC acquired two simulators, which cost about $500,000 each. Factoring in 2024 capital spending projections, MRC will have invested more than $530 million directly in the refinery since 2020, according to the PowerPoint. 

MRC has experienced significant workforce turnover in recent years – about half the current workforce was hired since 2020, Ingram said; that was the year PBF Energy, MRC's parent, completed its purchase of the refinery from Shell Oil Products US. MRC also brought back some retirees, Ingram said, and created several new leadership positions such as MRC Operations Excellence Manager, MRC Goal Zero Supervisor and Western Region Senior Director of Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE).

MRC Manager Daniel Ingram addresses the council last week.

Elaborating on the turnaround process, Ingram said each refinery unit has its own turnaround schedule, usually on a five- to seven-year cycle, and that the various unit turnarounds are not all done at one time but rather grouped into blocks. The hydrocracker block is scheduled for turnaround in May. Turnarounds are usually targeted for the first quarter, this year being an exception.

The FCC (Fluid Catalytic Cracking) block is scheduled for the first quarter of 2025 in what is expected to be "a very large turnaround" Ingram said, "one of the largest, if not the largest, turnaround … under PBF for sure, maybe the history of the site, in terms of total scope, manpower and activities that will be going on."

This year's first quarter also featured a legal settlement over the implementation of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District's Rule 6-5, adopted in 2021, under which MRC is supposed to reduce, by 80 percent, particulate matter emissions from its fluidized catalytic cracking unit. The only way to do that, it was initially assumed, was for MRC to install a device called a wet gas scrubber. But MRC sued, saying that installing a wet gas scrubber would be cost-prohibitive and unfeasible, among other criticisms.

Under the settlement, MRC agreed to comply with the standards of Rule 6:5 by way of an “Alternative Emission Monitoring System (AEMS)” that was developed in collaboration with "technical experts in process engineering and air quality,” the PowerPoint notes. Ingram later explained that MRC's compliance with Rule 6-5 would come by way of, roughly speaking, producing less particulate at the front end instead of having to scrub it out at the back end. That approach, by contrast to a wet gas scrubber, would save vast amounts of water and electricity, and eliminate the need to dispose of the sludge that is a byproduct of the wet gas scrubbing process, Ingram noted. He estimated the refinery would invest $70 million to $100 million to meet all aspects of Rule 6-5.

The "First Quarter 2024 Refinery Update" PowerPoint can be found at https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/2532606/PBF_MRC_Presentation_4.3.24.pdf

Ingram's presentation was well-received by council members, who followed up with numerous questions, some highly technical. After Councilman Mark Ross noted the technical nature of the discussion of the refinery's operations, and many lay people's unfamiliarity with technical terms like flexicoker, hydrocracker and catacarb, Ingram suggested a possible future "Refinery 101" primer for the public, perhaps at an open house.

Councilman Satinder Malhi, noting that the refinery impacts not just Martinez but the entire region, said, "We're going to continue to be a refinery town for the foreseeable future. This is the reality. We have to find a way to coexist."

In the ensuing public comment period, refinery critics were outnumbered by a 2-1 ratio by MRC employees and union officials who praised the company as a provider of well-paying jobs and a major contributor to the city and regional economy.

They included a single mom who had to work three jobs to support her son before getting hired by the refinery 12 years ago; the refinery has been "a blessing," she said. Another, 16-year employee at the refinery told how her job there improved the life of her family, and rejected "this narrative that we're an ugly corporation," adding, "MRC is my family."

Another employee, an instrumentation coordinator and member of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 302, said that 15 years ago, he was a homeless drug addict in Sacramento before turning his life around and ending up at MRC, which gave him — and his wife, who now works there, too — an opportunity for a well-paying career.

Tom Hansen, business manager at IBEW Local 302 and president of the Building Trades Council, who grew up in Martinez, lauded MRC for its dedication to safety and noted that local hires get first crack for jobs there.

Bill Whitney, chief executive director of the Contra Costa Building and Construction Trades Council, touted MRC as "a super-, mega-economic engine" that generates middle-class jobs and provides taxes to the county that pay for essential services, and refineries generally as places where "amazing, mind-boggling amounts of world-class chemistry and physics (are) going on."

Another refinery employee noted that the work situation at the refinery is not as dangerous as in generations past, and praised today's safety and training standards at the refinery. He noted that it produces the fuel for the boat he takes out on the water, and the jet fuel for the planes that take him to vacations in Hawaii.

Chuck Leonard, political representative for Plumbers and Steamfitters Union Local 342, said this is his 41st year at the refinery, where his first job was on the flexicoker back in 1984, when "it was a different world." He said work at the refinery, where his grandson is a fourth-generation steamfitter, is much safer today, in large part thanks to members of the community.

"It's because of you and your engagement," he said, thanking residents for "holding MRC accountable." 

"You are the fenceline community," he said. "My members are Ground Zero workers."

Critics of the refinery among the public speakers included Heidi Taylor, of the community group Healthy Martinez, who said "Martinez is not just a refinery town. Martinez is a lot more," citing great businesses, a great downtown, hiking and an expanding waterfront. "Please do not clog our courts with frivolous lawsuits again," she said to MRC, adding that the $500,000 she said MRC paid its lawyers could have sponsored a lot of local events, or bought another simulator.

Linda Olveira talked about the "promises, promises, promises" made by MRC and asked, "How are you going to monitor all these promises?" She likened getting "lessons" from MRC about pollution and its causes to "the fox guarding the henhouse."

An independent, third-party consultant's Incident Investigation/Root Cause Analysis of the Nov. 24-25, 2022 spent catalyst release will be the subject of a public meeting and opportunity to comment this week.

A 45-day public comment period on the report opened on April 4 and will close on May 20.

The consultant, Scott Berger and Associates, found inadequate training, worker fatigue and failure to implement safeguards among the key causes of the release. More directly, the consultant found, a key cause was the fact that an important piece of equipment designed to regulate the flow of catalyst was left in manual mode instead of being placed in automatic mode. 

The meeting, co-hosted by Contra Costa Health's Hazardous Materials Program and the consultant, will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. April 11 at 1025 Escobar St., Room 110A/B/C, Martinez, and will also be attendable via Zoom. The link: https://zoom.us/j/98874840760#success

The report is available at https://www.cchealth.org/home/showpublisheddocument/29932/638475570133665981.

The following items were written by Craig Lazzeretti

Refinery safety culture assessment

In addition to the root cause analysis of the spent catalyst report, consultant Scott Berger is also working on a report about the overall safety culture at the refinery that should be made public in the coming weeks. At the March 28 county-led MRC Oversight Committee meeting, Berger said he visited the refinery in early March and reviewed documents to “better understand the leadership processes” in place at the refinery. Without going into detail, he said that he found strong management processes in a variety of areas and “quite a few leadership attributes that are needed, or would be needed, to drive a strong process safety culture.”

He added later in the discussion: “These kinds of behaviors are things that I think will support the next round of improvements that I think will need to be made.”

Berger said he hopes to have a first version of the report ready by the middle of April, a draft of which would be provided to the Oversight Committee at its next meeting in late April or early May.

Housing Element revisions

As the City Council signed off on the latest round of revisions required by the state to certify its long-overdue Housing Element for the 2023-31 cycle, city staff and their housing consultant made clear that the latest speedbump in the process may have occurred in large part from a lack of communication by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

Consultant Beth Thompson told the council on Wednesday that both prior to and after submitting the revised Housing Element to the state in December, city staff and her team had asked to discuss the changes with HCD but were were rebuffed. This was the second draft the city had sent to the state for certification, following changes requested by HCD.

The city said the latest revisions requested in HCD’s Feb. 16 findings letter were minor in nature and designed to “clarify and connect the dots for the reader.”

“It’s unfortunate that they could not meet with staff because those dots could have been connected in those meetings and clarifications could have been expressed such that we might have had a very different comment letter than the one we received in February,” City Attorney Terri Highsmith said.

In response to a question from Councilwoman Debbie McKillop, Planning Manager Michael Cass said it was unusual for HCD to decline such requests to meet with staff on Housing Element provisions.

Fire station closure

Contra Costa Fire Protection District Station 14, located at 521 Jones St. in Martinez, will be closed for approximately 90 days for repair work. During the closure, the station’s crew and apparatus will temporarily relocate to former Fire Station 12 at 1240 Shell Ave.

Food truck regulations

The Planning Commission will take up proposed changes to city regulations governing food trucks at its meeting on Wednesday. Under the proposal, food truck vendors would be required to obtain a temporary use permit to operate and would need to comply with the following requirements:

• Secure approval of the property owner or the city, as appropriate;

• Secure and provide proof of all applicable state/local permits;

• Secure and display a city business license;

• Report Martinez as the point of sale for the sales tax collected while operating in Martinez city limits;

• Minimize noise from generators; and

• Limit operations to 100 days per year (not including Mondays and Tuesdays as most restaurants are closed those days).

The proposed regulations also make clear that the city cannot prohibit mobile vendors from operating in legal parking spaces under the state vehicle code and case law, but it can “impose time, place and manner restrictions that have a health or safety rationale.”

The city is proposing that food truck operating hours be limited to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The proposed food truck regulations are part of a broader city effort to bring its zoning rules into compliance with state law.

Wednesday’s Planning Commission meeting starts at 7 p.m. The agenda can be viewed at this link: https://granicus_production_attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/martinez/a92f5d50bae9d54da94dd1727d0d20e60.pdf

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