Open letter to Chevron: A solution for environmental health, justice and jobs

Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)
Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
West County Toxics Coalition (WCTC)


Mike Coyle, General Manager
Chevron Richmond Refinery
P.O. Box 1272
Richmond, CA 94802-0272

Open letter to Chevron: A solution for environmental health, justice and jobs

Dear Mr. Coyle,
You state that Chevron’s Richmond refinery project should go forward now, it will protect our environmental health, there would be “no heavier crude oil processed” and Chevron “would continue to make gasoline for the Bay Area from the medium and light crude oils we now process.” (7/22/09 S.F. Chronicle.) We urge Chevron to make a public commitment to do what you say and not refine heavier, dirtier oil at this refinery.
Such a commitment would include:

• Enforceable limits to assure the oil refined will not be heavier (lbs/barrel) or dirtier (arsenic, mercury, nickel, nitrogen, selenium, sulfur or vanadium content). Each oil quality limit would allow the highest 365-day average of recent years as a running annual average in order to allow the refinery day-to-day operating flexibility.
• Monitoring to implement this assurance. Levels of these constituents can vary in the daily blends of oils Chevron introduces to processing at two different places in the refinery. Each limited constituent would be measured daily in each of these oil streams at the point where it is first introduced to processing after blending.
• Transparency to verify this assurance publicly. Oil quality monitoring results would be certified and reported publicly each month.

As the Superior Court found, the environmental impact report for your project did not adequately address the type of oil to be refined. As independent experts have shown, your project would enable the processing of heavier and more contaminated oil, which could increase many types of pollution significantly. It is not reasonable to ask people who live near the refinery and already face a legacy of toxic racism, disparate health risk, and pollution-related blight to accept this added risk.

The commitment we seek would not require Chevron to change the project as currently designed. It would not require the refinery to do anything different from what it is doing now. It would assure that all the impacts from refining “dirtier” oil will be prevented, so our health will be protected, and everyone can get back to work right now.