Archive for July, 2009

RICHMOND (BCN)

State Attorney General Jerry Brown has offered to mediate negotiations between Chevron, the city of Richmond and three environmental groups in an effort to reach an agreement that will allow Chevron to resume construction of an upgrade to its Richmond refinery, Brown said today.

More than 1,000 construction workers were laid off early this month after the refinery was ordered to stop work on its Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project, according to Chevron.

Brown, who made his offer at the Richmond City Council meeting Tuesday night, said he believes the issues could be resolved quickly.

“This is a huge problem when 1,000 hard working Americans are out of work,” Brown said. “I want to get them back to work.”

He said he believes the difference between the two sides is relatively small, particularly when compared to the financial hardship that workers are experiencing as a result of the work stoppage.

“I believe it can be resolved,” Brown said.

Following Brown’s statement, the Richmond City Council unanimously passed a resolution urging Chevron and the environmental groups to take Brown up on his offer, Brown said.

“We are very ready, willing and able to join Attorney General Jerry Brown in settlement talks,” Mimi Ho with the environmental group Asian Pacific Environmental Network said today.

The Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment and the West County Toxics Coalition sued Chevron in September to stop the project, which they claim would give the refinery the capacity to process heavier crude oil and could result in increased pollution in nearby communities.

Ho said all three environmental groups hoped Chevron would agree to Brown’s offer.

“Community members need both jobs and health,” Ho said.

Chevron spokesman Brent Tippen, however, said this afternoon that Chevron appreciates Brown’s offer, but that the company does not want Brown to mediate negotiations.

The two sides are currently in private mediation and Tippen said that although the mediation adjourned today, the company believes it is premature to consider other mediation proposals.

The Richmond City Council approved the project by a 5-4 vote last July and Chevron broke ground in September. At that time, the three environmental groups, represented by the law firm Earthjustice, sued the refinery to stop the project.

In June, Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga ruled that the environmental impact report for the project was invalid because it failed to disclose whether it would enable the refinery to process heavier crude oil.

On July 1, Zuniga gave the refinery 60 days to demobilize construction and Chevron began laying off workers.

On Monday, Chevron filed a notice of appeal in the state appeals court seeking to overturn Zuniga’s ruling.

Ho said environmentalists want an enforceable commitment from Chevron that it will not begin processing heavier crude oil.

Chevron has repeatedly said that it did not plan to process heavier crude, but has declined agree to a cap on the quality of crude oil it would be refining.

“We want an enforceable commitment that the project will not worsen the health impact on the community,” Ho said.

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The Mobilization for Climate Justice

Chevron owes more to Richmond and California

Antonia Juhasz

Friday, July 17, 2009

This week, Fortune magazine released its list of the 500 largest corporations in the world. With a nearly 25 percent increase in its revenues from 2007, Chevron Corp. moved from the sixth to the fifth largest corporation in the world. Only 36 countries on the planet had GDPs larger than Chevron’s $263 billion in 2008 revenues.

By revenue, Chevron is the largest corporation in California, the second-largest U.S. oil corporation and the third-largest corporation in the nation. Chevron’s nearly $24 billion in profits for 2008 were its largest on record and the fourth-highest profits of any corporation in the world. Chevron’s profits have increased every year since 2002, increasing by an astounding 2,100 percent.

Those who have not benefited are the Richmond community, the site of Chevron’s oldest refinery, and the state of California.

In November, Richmond voters passed Measure T. At the current price of oil, it would provide the city with an additional $16 million annually from Chevron (adding 11 percent to the city’s tax revenues). Chevron sued, challenging the new tax.

Chevron has also repeatedly blocked state initiatives to impose a severance tax on oil extracted in the state. California is the only major oil producing state in the nation without such a tax. It is estimated that imposition of a severance tax could bring in over $1 billion a year to the California state budget.

Moreover, the Los Angeles Times reports Chevron’s role in lobbying to keep initiatives to increase corporate taxation more broadly off the table in the state’s budget negotiations.

The Chevron Richmond refinery is already the largest industrial polluter in the Bay Area. The Environmental Protection Agency reported nearly 100,000 pounds of toxic waste from the site in 2007, including more than 4,000 pounds of benzene, a known human carcinogen. The refinery is now, and has been, listed as in “high priority violation” of air compliance standards, among other violations, by the EPA every year since at least 2006.

Chevron now wants to retool the refinery to burn heavier crude that can be much more polluting than lighter grades. The senior scientist at Richmond’s Communities for a Better Environment has found no technological fix available to ensure that a refinery can mitigate this type of pollution. CBE joined other community health and environmental groups to block the retooling, and the court ruled in their favor. The groups are now asking the city to better regulate the refinery by specifically capping the type of crude it can refine to ban the heavier more polluting grades. Chevron has said it plans to appeal the ruling. (It will also give Richmond community programs $565,000 in grants connected to the project.)

Unfortunately, Chevron had already begun construction at the refinery and subsequently laid off 1,100 workers. Community groups have asked Chevron to instead work on necessary upgrades they have been demanding for years to make the refinery cleaner and safer – work that would create many jobs.

More beneficial to the long-term health of all who live in the city – including refinery workers – is not only a cleaner and safer refinery, but a company willing to give back to the communities within which it operates and the state it calls home.

Antonia Juhasz is the director of the Chevron program at Global Exchange in San Francisco.www.GlobalExchange.org.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/17/ED1B18NQA9.DTL

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CORPORATIONS OUT

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