Governor’s order on zero-emission vehicles leaves room for local renewable fuel producers
The recent executive order accelerating California’s transition toward zero-emission vehicles may not have been the total death sentence some feared for Kern County’s petroleum industry.
The head of a 26,000-barrel-per-day refinery near Lamont said she sees local economic opportunity in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Sept. 23 order requiring all new passenger cars and trucks sold in the state be zero-emission by 2035. But she’s not referring to electric vehicles.
Jennifer Haley, president and CEO of 155-employee Kern Oil & Refining Co., noted the governor’s order calls for continuing the state’s efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels beyond 2030. To her, that’s affirmation of the facility’s years of experience with renewable diesel and biodiesel, which the company had already defined as its future.
“To me this is certainly a challenge but I think inherent in every challenge is an opportunity,” Haley said. “As a company, I think we already have defined renewable fuels and carbon neutrality as our future.” She added that renewable fuels make up 10 percent of the plant’s output.
The net impact of Newsom’s order on Kern’s economy is not expected to be helpful in that there will be less demand for locally produced crude as California accelerates the phaseout of internal combustion engines.
But even with more people driving electric cars, it’s expected that many passenger and commercial vehicles will continue to run on gasoline as well as diesel, more of which would be made — and is being produced locally — using more environmentally sustainable ingredients. And the governor seems ready to support that.
For more than 10 years Kern Oil has co-processed tallow to make renewable diesel. The refinery also produces blended biodiesels, including a 20-percent blend it has sold since 2017 using a product it purchases from a third party.
Other local companies are doing similar work. The state’s leading producer of biodiesel, Denver-based Crimson Renewable Energy LLC, has a refining plant at 17731 Millux Road that makes a biodiesel completely from waste such as used cooking oil.
The company’s website says the product contains no hazardous materials, can be stored in conventional fuel tanks and biodegrades faster than petroleum diesel while releasing 80 percent less carbon.
Crimson did not respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this year a Torrance-based company bought the former, 67,000-barrel-per-day refinery on Rosedale Highway. It then announced a $365 million project to reopen the plant by early 2022 with about 100 employees producing 10,000 barrels per day of biodiesel from cooking oil. It said later the refinery will make the product from a ground-cover plant called camelina.
Additionally, clusters of dairies in Kern and elsewhere in the Central Valley are being fitted with so-called digesters that harvest and process methane from cow manure. The refined gas, subsidized by state taxpayers, is then sold as renewable fuel.
In the Bay Area, two large refineries are being converted to produce renewable fuels as well, a development Cathy Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association trade group, says reflects the reality liquid fuels will be around “for a long time.”
Her concern with the governor’s order is that it remains unclear how affordable, feasible and equitable the state’s shift to zero-emission vehicles and more renewable fuels will ultimately prove.
“Is (greater use of renewable fuels” an opportunity?” she asked. “I want to make sure I understand what really the opportunity is as we explore this pathway.”
Some environmental groups remain skeptical of renewable diesel.
“Having placed California on a critical path
to zero-emission vehicles, it defies logic to continue to expand our fossil fuel-based economy and perpetuate the climate and air pollution crises borne heaviest by communities at the frontlines of fossil fuel infrastructure,” Gladys Limon, executive director of the California Environmental Justice Alliance, said in a news release.
She criticized low-carbon fuels as “false solutions … that could create a dangerous offramp that will hinder our progress.”
With regard to renewable fuels, Newsom’s action ordered the California Air Resources Board, working with other state agencies, to “develop and propose strategies to continue the state’s current efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of fuels beyond 2030 with consideration of the full life cycle of carbon.” It also called for expediting the process for repurposing oil production and refining facilities.
Lorelei Oviatt, Kern County’s top planner and a vocal advocate of the local petroleum industry, said by email she sees local renewable fuel refiners as a natural fit but one still in early stages as the state begins to scale up alternative fuels production.
“Given our proximity to interstate highways, rail, experienced workforce in the oil and renewable industry and interest, we see a bright future here for the expansion this sector of energy,” she wrote.
The president and CEO of the Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce, Nick Ortiz, said by email the local petroleum industry’s future “can seem uncertain or fraught at times” but that with the leadership and ingenuity of companies like Kern Oil the county can continue to be California’s energy capital.
“Furthermore, their foresight by investing and demonstrating a future in renewable fuels keeps the dialogue with the state open and ongoing around the import of the industry and the jobs they provide to the local economy,” Ortiz wrote.
Kern Community College District, which includes Bakersfield College, announced that the spring semester will continue virtually.
Chancellor Tom Burke sent a letter to all KCCD employees letting them know that the decision was made in the interest of the health and safety of students and employees.
Classes next semester will continue to be offered the same way they are now. Most classes will be held virtually, but there will be some students who come on campus for specialized labs in a modified setting.
“Our goal is the health and safety status of our students and staff,” said Cindy Collier, the interim director of Student Health and Wellness.
Collier said the colleges are currently putting together their schedule for the spring semester. Early registration begins Nov. 4.
Kern County remains in the most restricted “Purple Tier,” though it is right on the verge of heading into the less restricted “Red Tier.” But Collier said it’s hard to predict whether the county will stay in that tier through spring semester. The seasonal flu could also complicate efforts to return.
“We don’t want to go back and forth, back and forth,” she said.
Collier said that should conditions change, the college could decide to loosen restrictions. But she says that it’s much easier for the college to decide to open up later than to plan for an opening and then close again.
She adds that reopening would also be a big undertaking for the colleges. It would require cleanings between classes and deciding which students are given priority to come to campus, since classrooms are allowed to be filled at no more than 25 percent of capacity, even in the “Red Tier.”
Enrollment this year for the colleges has been down 7 percent from last year — a fact Collier attributes to the cascade of effects of COVID-19. Some students find virtual learning stressful or it’s just not realistic on top of the demands of their job or taking care of their children’s virtual learning.
Collier believes it’s important for students to have notice about what format they’ll be receiving their learning next semester.
“We’re better off giving our students advanced
The city of Bakersfield will allow religious services, fitness classes and youth sports to temporarily take place in city parks under a new program similar to one that allows restaurants to expand dining onto sidewalks and parking lots due to COVID-19 restrictions on indoor seating.
A special use permit offered through the Recreation and Parks Department is available at no-cost but groups must show that they are insured, said the department’s director Dianne Hoover. An application is available online and takes five days to process.
Hoover said some groups had already started to use the parks for gatherings but it posed problems with maintenance schedules, such as when sprinklers turn on and lawns are mowed. Residents near smaller parks also complained about noise and crowded parking on streets.
The permit allows a better way to accommodate groups, Hoover said.
Nine parks among all city wards have been designated to accommodate the groups. They area Beach, Yokuts, The Park at River Walk, Greystone, Grissom, Wayside, Patriots, Siemon and Stiern.
Each park has bathrooms and off-street parking, Hoover said.
So far three groups have applied for the permit but Hoover declined to name them until the application is processed.
Under Kern County’s current reopening status, churches and other houses of worship may only hold services outside, gyms are not allowed to reopen and youth sports can take place outside only.
Cities like San Clemente and San Diego have allowed similar use of their public parks for religious and sports programs.
Under normal circumstances, commercial operations are not allowed in parks, Hoover said.
An environmental document central to Kern’s push to reinstitute streamlined local oil permitting will be revised and put back out for public comment no later than early November, the county announced Oct. 9.
The change pushes back the approval process by at least 45 days. It means the county Planning Commission will not host a hearing on the matter in November, as had been the plan, and the Board of Supervisors won’t be able to vote on it before the end of the year.
“We appreciate all the thoughtful comments we received (during the initial public comment period) and the recirculated document to be released by the first week in November continues our commitment to environmental protection and fact-based information for the decision makers and public to make an informed decision,” Lorelei Oviatt, director of Kern’s Planning and Natural Resources Department, said by email.
The document, known as a draft supplemental recirculated environmental impact report, had been put out for public review during the summer. Its 45-day comment period expired in mid-September and county staff said they were working on addressing public comments.
An earlier version of the report was approved by the board in late 2015 as part of a new zoning ordinance making local oil permitting a strictly ministerial process. But environmentalists and a local farming entity sued and ultimately persuaded an appeals court to strike down the document in February.
The ordinance had required a variety of measures to cushion the industry’s environmental and health impacts in exchange for new permitting certainty for local oil producers.
Environmentalists had called for more time to review the document, which measured about 1,600 pages. They continue to assail the county’s industry-funded efforts, saying Kern should quit trying for a blanket review of local oil and gas activity and instead examine the local impacts of each individual permit application.
Chelsea Tu, senior attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, which has offices in Oakland and Kern, said by email Friday the county’s review and public process has long been problematic.
“No matter how many times the county revises this environmental impact report, the bottom line is that passing this ordinance would green-light tens of thousands of oil and gas wells and bring even more air and water pollution in Kern communities,” Tu wrote.
Another opponent of the county’s initiative is Shafterarea grower Keith Gardiner, who successfully sued over what he said were unfair permitting rules favoring oil companies over farmers. He said in an email statement Friday Kern’s Board of Supervisors should do more to protect agriculture.
“My hope is that this extension will result in the county proposing specific, effective mitigation measures for agriculture,” he wrote. “These measures could be solutions such as setting up agriculture conservation easements and land banks, clustering new oil infrastructure and removing old production equipment that is still polluting the land and groundwater.”