2 of 5 Bay Area refineries to stop making gasoline | Hacker News Reader

2 of 5 Bay Area refineries to stop making gasoline

ktvu.com

46 pointsnradov54 comments

Sounds nice. I grew up in El Paso Texas and there is a huge refinery in the lower valley and it completely ruined the quality of life. It’s located in a poor immigrant neighborhood right in the city core.

You can see the flares burning all day and all night. The smell in the surrounding neighborhood is unbearable. Every day tankers line up outside causing traffic jams so much that the refinery has to hire police traffic controllers. More than once I recall a truck crashing and spilling its contents while growing up.

Really sucks all around.

The Martinez refinery has had two accidental releases in the past 12 months. I have some family in the area and they were advised to shelter indoors with all their windows shut for one of them.

Officials release map of hazardous fallout from refinery mishap: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-04-11/officia...

City of Martinez page and other incidents: https://www.cityofmartinez.org/government/information-on-eve...

Martinez homes aren't cheap either, even for the Bay Area - median sale price is almost $800K.

> Martinez homes aren't cheap either, even for the Bay Area - median sale price is almost $800K

I am frequently surprised at how little of a discount there is for living in toxic or extremely unpleasant places in an otherwise expensive area. Over the years I’ve seen many listings for homes nearby to desirable areas but adjacent to superfund sites, directly facing interstate highways or elevated subway tracks, downwind of sewage treatment plants etc, and consistently I feel like the price is nowhere remotely close to cheap enough to justify the downside.

> I grew up in El Paso Texas and there is a huge refinery in the lower valley and it completely ruined the quality of life. It’s located in a poor immigrant neighborhood right in the city core.

What came first, the city core with residential neighbourhoods or the refinery?

(Some people complain about Van Nuys airport (KVNY), but the airport was there first (the famous scene in the 1942 film Casablanca was shot there), and people built residences around it.)

What is now known as El Paso has been inhabited for thousands of years, but I always think of as the formal starts to a lot of Texas cities (speaking as a San Antonio native) that we would recognize are when the Spanish built missions with the goal of colonizing the areas. It looks like that began in El Paso circa 1682. So some time before the refineries.

https://www.elpasodiocese.org/historic-missions.html

Refineries are usually built at the peripheries of towns. But land is cheap and people who want cheap houses buy there after the refineries are built. Kinda like airports --built out in the outskirts, land is cheap, then people build around the cheap land and subsequently complain about noise pollution.

Coastlines and waterways are typically highly-valued even without oil refineries on the coastline next to the homes and the port and the harbor.

FWIU there are newer AGR Acidic Gas Reduction capabilities for reducing emissions from refineries?

The Copenhill facility in Copenhagen appears to be really good at capturing flue waste; maybe the best in the world? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amager_Bakke

Can e.g. graphene filters be made onsite from e.g. flue gas?

Other oil things:

Fossil fuel phase out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_phase-out

Carbon-neutral fuel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-neutral_fuel

Electrofuel (eFuel); Porsche, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrofuel

Decarbonization of shipping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decarbonization_of_shipping

Civilian Drone port control; https://freetakteam.github.io/FreeTAKServer-User-Docs/tools/...

FAA UAS RemoteID: https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/remote_id

Open Drone ID: https://github.com/opendroneid/

Standby drone spill containment could be recommended?

Could a (partially-submerged) prop pull oil spill containment booms of foam and/or aerogel, in order to automatedly haul up oil spills for pressing into extant modular recapture vessels, with drift and drone sensor fusion for e.g. human in-the-loop route planning?

The Ocean Cleanup has experience with similar trawling, though plastic recycling is looking good.

SeaBin organization has dock-mounted trash-capture fluid vortices with low pressure.

FWIU, it looks like hemp aerogel just bested treated polyurethane foam just bested hair for soaking up oil spills: "Self-cleaning superhydrophobic aerogels from waste hemp noil for ultrafast oil absorption and highly efficient PM removal" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13835...

"NASA finds super-emitters of methane" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33427157#33431427

Dandelion rubber tires solve the "synthetic rubber is most of the microplastic in the ocean" problem; and dandelions can probably be planted next to refineries? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37728005

"Synthesis of Clean Hydrogen Gas from Waste Plastic at Zero Net Cost" (2023) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202306763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37886955 from https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rice.edu

They aren’t closing down, they are going to refine bio-diesel instead

My understanding is bio-diesel manufacturing is far more pleasant to be around, though it’s still going to have a lot of trucks etc.

Oil is just a amazingly nasty stuff.

While bad, Houston is even worse. Large parts of it are littered petrochemical plant "bombs" that explode from time-to-time.

Don't forget the copper refinery next door. :/

Lots of life’s necessities come from industrial works that aren’t pretty. We could shut all of them down and go back to the Stone Age.

The fallacy is that they are "necessary" when they are entirely elective and a conscious or unconscious choice. There's always a choice that doesn't involve a Hobson's choice.

The fallacy here is that choices of end users to use liquid fuel for transportation have not changed, and the entire scheme is predicated on regulatory incentives, that trade the local impact of refineries for the substantial ecological and social impact of biofuels.

So there's a lot of confusion about CA gas prices [1]. Often this is simply blamed on greedy oil companies. While I'm no fan of oil companies, to understand this you need to know that CA uses its own gas mix [2]. In reality there are two factors in play here:

1. Permanent loss of refning capacity for CA's gas mix (as noted in this article); and

2. CA could change the law to use the same gas as the rest of the country, which would probably cut gas prices by ~$1/gallon.

The special gas mix was originally created because of smog issues in places like CA but improved fuel and pollution standards in cars have rendered that larely obsolte.

I can only guess why (2) doesn't happen but a good educated guess is that Newsom has presidential hopes in 2028 and doesn't want to pick a fight with the environmental wing of the Democratic Party.

So remember that: high CA gas prices are a choice.

[1]: https://gasprices.aaa.com/state-gas-price-averages/

[2]: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gasoline-manipulation...

> The special gas mix was originally created because of smog issues in places like CA but improved fuel and pollution standards in cars have rendered that larely obsolete.

That's an interesting claim. Are you claiming (1) that there are no places in California that have problematic smog levels, such that reducing smog is obsolete as a goal, or (2) that the changes you reference haven't just moved the pollution baseline down but actually changed the relevant mechanisms so that the California formulation no longer reduces emissions in the current mix of cars on the road in California?

And, for either, where is the evidence in support of the claim?

> I can only guess why (2) doesn't happen but a good educated guess is that Newsom has presidential hopes in 2028 and doesn't want to pick a fight with the environmental wing of the Democratic Party.

You leave out two important points:

(1) California is not an executive dictatorship, Newsom couldn't unilaterally mandate that no matter who he was willing to pick a fight with, but more importantly,

(2) To abandon using reformulated gasoline for a large portion (by population) of the State, who he'd need to pick a fight with is the US federal government, because the urban counties of Southern California are under an EPA mandate due to air quality:

https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/reformulated-gasoline

Dang EPA, always increasing our gas prices and shutting down our containment units.

In LA at the moment, the smog is still here

If I were king, I would swap for the regular formulation again, and add a $1 a gallon state tax, and use that to invest in the electrical grid and public charging.

> If I were king, I would swap for the regular formulation again, and add a $1 a gallon state tax,

You'd need to be king of an independent California to do that, otherwise, for much of the population of you would increase the base cost of their (still reformulated) gas and add a tax on top of tthat, because reformulated gas is federally mandated for a large (by population) portion of the state, and narrowing the reformulated market to the counties under federal mandate would drive up gas prices (before the tax increase) there.

Usually the HN-ification of titles makes them much better, but in this case I think the original was more accurate. This title makes it sound like all the Bay Area refineries are giving up gasoline.

Mods, maybe prepend “Some”?

Even better, as you first suggested, I would go right back to the original title, which is clear and specific:

2 of 5 Bay Area refineries to stop making gasoline

Just having a number in a title doesn't make it clickbait. Sometimes the numbers are what you need to know.

And it's fine for a submitter to edit the title in the interest of clarity. I think you get a couple of hours to do this.

Thanks! Fixed.

This is what people say they want... but when it starts hitting them in the pocket, they will complain how the fuel companies are gouging them --you might even get the government -who know why- to investigate the pricing anyway for appearances. It'll be interesting, alright.

This is what climate activists want. It is not what most people want, or say they want.

The mentality of climate activist is that a higher cost now is worth it to save the environment, and that it will lead to lower costs overtime.

Everyone complaining about gas price due to environmental reasons (such as carbon tax) fail to account for the cost of insurance, infrastructure, and disaster relief that results from climate change.

Doing nothing has a huge cost. And not centuries from now.

What an extraordinary assertion. Everyone? Are you certain that climate activists are the ones correctly accounting for the costs and benefits of their proposals?

> Are you certain that climate activists are the ones correctly accounting for the costs and benefits of their proposals?

The insurance companies are certainly doing accounting for climate change:

* https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html

* https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-rese...

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is...

* https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-cana...

They regularly have to pay out for what happens, and they're not happy about the direction things are going and are passing the cost along. Just ask anyone living in Florida:

* https://www.newsweek.com/florida-insurance-crisis-explained-...

* https://www.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance...

And it's probably a fairly safe assumption that it's only going to get more expensive.

I have confidence in insurance companies, who are private businesses with skin in the game, to predict short term climate effects on disaster costs. I have little to no confidence in climate activists to predict the costs and benefits of their interventions over much longer time periods.

> save the environment

The environment we live in, BTW.

The planet itself will be fine: it has been smacked more than once with asteroids and is still here.

What we're talking about is preserving the climatic conditions that human civilization can comfortably live in. "Saving the environment" is about saving ourselves.

I guess you don't understand the scope and scale of the threat to life and property. Climate change denial continues...

You guys have been predicting doom since the 70s

Is the biofuel going to be ethanol?

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-corn-based-e...

...ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.

No, the article says biodiesel, not ethanol.

This should have an interesting impact on CA gas prices. I see news of gas prices dropping and prices have only gone up over the last months in CA. So I don’t see this being a net positive in prices.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-03/newsom-e... (“1 in 4 new cars sold in California last quarter were EVs, an all-time high”)

https://www.kbb.com/car-news/a-tesla-model-3-for-20k-yes-in-... (“A Tesla Model 3 for $20K? Yes, in California”)

Doesn’t have to be a Tesla of course, any EV will do. If prices don’t increase and stay elevated, there is little incentive to migrate off of fossil fuels for light vehicles (and generous incentives are being provided to help migrate).

50% for EVs and hybrids in the Bay Area [1]. We’re approaching the point where the region’s gas prices start accelerating upwards as the economics of its distribution begin failing.

[1] https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/first...

Additional citation: https://insideevs.com/news/690613/tesla-prices-fall-below-av... ("Tesla Prices Fall Below Average US Car Costs, Model 3 On Par With Toyota Corolla")

> I see news of gas prices dropping and prices have only gone up over the last months in CA.

California average per gallon prices for regular, mid-grade, and premium gasoline, as well as diesel, are all down over the day, week, month, and year, and down more as the time period gets longer. (Your particular local area or preferred gas station--or your subjective impression from those--may be up, but...)

https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=CA

Capitalism will always figure out how to pretend to mold “supply and demand” to enable maximum profit extraction.

And here we see the average HN user in their natural habitat: complaining about capitalism on a startup accelerator forum.

You could be right but OTOH the same comment could literally be interpreted as complete endorsement of capitalism.

Who would it be doing the complaining then?

It’s clearly not…he says “pretend to mold”

It’s like saying:

> physics will always pretend to mold the laws of thermodynamics to prevent perpetual motion.

And you go:

> this could be read as an endorsement of thermodynamics!

I have to confess to a bit of skepticism of the organization "Biofuel Watch," which I've never heard of before and which it seems to be hard to find much information about.

Wait, biofuels? I thought they were widely considered as a bad idea?

They are an excellent idea for big ag and their lobbyists.

permanently converting their East Bay refineries to produce renewable, bio-based diesel fuel from plant-based materials

I bet there is a bunch of plankton and underwater growth like kelp they could use to make bio-diesel. Maybe even use some of those really large red trees too.

There is nowhere near enough kelp in the ocean to produce a useful amount of fuel. It grows only in relatively shallow water, and serves as a critical habitat and food source for many species. Some kelp is already harvested for other purposes.

It isn't the existing volume that matters; it is the growth rate. Can it outperform other biological sources? If kelp is a good source then expand its range to beyond the limited habitats in which it exists currently.

They are known for their high growth rate—the genera Macrocystis and Nereocystis can grow as fast as half a metre a day, ultimately reaching 30 to 80 metres (100 to 260 ft).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelp

There is no practical way to expand the range of kelp. It already grows everywhere it can.

The range of what is practical changes with how something is valued. If kelp became a higher value crop for biological derived fuel, then some things not practical today may become practical.

For example, kelp may not grow in some areas because those areas are especially hospitable to the "Invertebrates that eat kelp include snails and shellfish such as crabs, sea urchins, and abalone." [0] If some of the increased value of kelp were directed towards decreasing those species then it might become practical to grow kelp there.

0. https://earthlife.net/what-eats-kelp/

Nope. Purple urchins eat kelp. There's no practical way to clear them out of large areas.

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