Newson has been very successful—this year we will lose 20% of our refinery capacity. That means limited availability of gas and significantly higher prices. Thanks to Trump in some place in the U.S. a gallon of gas is $1.98. In California in some places, it is up to $7, many places it is $6 and most places around $5.
“California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office represented the state in the two lawsuits, responded to requests for comment from Public Health Watch by referring the questions to the affected agencies. WSPA did not respond to requests for comment.
The moves have left environmental and labor advocates questioning the transparency of the negotiations. Lawyers for the Steelworkers were asked to sign off on the settlement of the lawsuit last September. They refused.
“At the end of the day, our biggest thing was that we were left out of a process in which we had the right to participate,” said Mike Smith, who heads the Steelworkers’ National Oil Bargaining Program in Pittsburgh and was a union staff representative for six years at Local 5 in Martinez.
This is fantasy. Regardless of this “settlement”, refineries are being closed and no new olds can be opened. Why is California in a DOOM LOOP? This is a major reason.
‘Secret Deal’ in California Would Weaken Regulations for Oil Refineries
Jim Morris and Molly Peterson, Public Health Watch, 4/22/25 https://www.kqed.org/news/12036965/secret-deal-california-would-weaken-regulations-oil-refineries
On Aug. 6, 2012, a corroded, eight-inch pipe at Chevron’s oil refinery in Richmond cracked open, sending a white cloud hundreds of feet into the air. The cloud quickly engulfed the 19 refinery firefighters, managers and other workers who had been trying to fix what had been a small leak in the pipe.
Some of them went to ground, unable to see past their hands; most ran or crawled out of the way. Then the vapor ignited, trapping a firefighter in a truck. He, too, ran out, through what eyewitnesses called a wall of flame.
That was just the beginning. The fire burned for hours; the smoke choked the Bay Area for days. Fifteen thousand people sought medical care for breathing problems and exposure to the toxic plume; hospitals admitted 20, including one refinery worker.
U.S. Chemical Safety Board investigators concluded that the fire could have been prevented if Chevron had heeded its own inspectors’ pleas to replace the decaying pipe, and if federal and California regulations had mandated better safety practices. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown convened a working group of 13 state agencies and departments to appraise the safety of California’s refineries, clustered in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
The safety measures rolled out over the next five years were among the strongest in the nation, giving workers unprecedented power to halt operations they felt were unsafe. Other rules were designed to protect communities near refineries from accidental chemical releases.
Now, more than 12 years after the Chevron fire, regulators are poised to weaken two key regulations that had been challenged in court by the Western States Petroleum Association, or WSPA, a trade association that lobbies heavily in California. A settlement of two lawsuits reached behind closed doors in September calls for easing some of those rules.
Union leaders and community advocates — who were excluded from the settlement negotiations — say the proposed changes would put workers and the public at greater risk.
“To be looking at the possibility of rolling back these regulations is dangerous and alarming for our communities,” said Marie Choi, communications director for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, or APEN, a watchdog group. “We can’t let industry write the rules.”
The California Environmental Protection Agency, known as CalEPA, set a Tuesday deadline to accept public comment on proposed changes to its accidental release program. The agency will make an internal decision afterward on whether to accept the changes.
At the same time, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, part of the Department of Industrial Relations, or DIR, is independently considering changes to safety rules affecting workers. A decision by the board may not come until 2026.
CalEPA said that the revisions are needed to provide clarity and consistency in applying the rules.
“Petroleum refineries have stated that certain terms and provisions of the [accidental release program] regulations are vague and confusing, making it difficult for them to comply,” the agency wrote in a statement accompanying the proposed amendments.
In a statement to Public Health Watch, a spokeswoman for DIR wrote that the agency and CalEPA “remain committed to protecting refinery workers and ensuring refinery operations meet all safety and environmental standards.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office represented the state in the two lawsuits, responded to requests for comment from Public Health Watch by referring the questions to the affected agencies. WSPA did not respond to requests for comment.
The moves have left environmental and labor advocates questioning the transparency of the negotiations. Lawyers for the Steelworkers were asked to sign off on the settlement of the lawsuit last September. They refused.
“At the end of the day, our biggest thing was that we were left out of a process in which we had the right to participate,” said Mike Smith, who heads the Steelworkers’ National Oil Bargaining Program in Pittsburgh and was a union staff representative for six years at Local 5 in Martinez.
“We don’t understand how this happened,” said Julia May, a senior scientist with Communities for a Better Environment, an advocacy group that helped craft the original process safety management rule. “We’ve had a bad history of [refinery] accidents in California due to cutting corners on maintenance, due to not listening to the workers.”
