Phillips 66 is blaming it on the rain.
Representatives from the Wilmington site of the oil refinery company said that inclement weather was to blame for the facility losing power on Feb. 25. Residents complained of loud noise and a foul odor in the days that followed.
Juliana Moreno, public affairs advisor for the Wilmington refinery, said that power lines fell to the ground around 12:30 a.m.
“The disruption impacted our electricity supply, and resulted in a shutdown of hundreds of operating motors across the refinery, and also shut down our own internal electricity content facility,” Moreno said at the March 13 meeting of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council.
Connie Mejia, senior public affairs specialist for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, or AQMD, said that the refinery notified AQMD on Feb. 25 about a loss of power.
“Inspectors were immediately deployed to conduct an on-site inspection of the facility,” Mejia wrote via email. “Staff was advised by refinery operators that a power line pole belonging to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had fallen onto a power box on the refinery’s premises, resulting in multiple units shutting down and subsequent flaring.”
Moreno said that the refinery’s safety measures worked, and brought the facility to a stable state. After this, the refinery began restarting.
“Although it took nearly two days to reestablish the utilities, we are pleased to report the refinery is back to normal operations,” Moreno said.
Tim Seidel, general manager for Wilmington and Carson Phillips 66 refineries, said that the refinery got the last unit up and running normally on the morning of March 13.
Chris Valle, vice president of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council, asked why the flaring was necessary, and pointed out that this was what got the attention of many residents in the area.
Seidel said that even if the refinery doesn’t have a power outage, it might need to use flaring, which is visible fire coming out of the refinery’s facilities. Just a voltage dip can cause motors to stop working, and most can’t restart by themselves, requiring the flaring when restarting.
“The unplanned flare event resulted in the release of over 500 pounds of Sulfur Dioxide emissions that was reported to the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal-OES),” Mejia wrote. “Refineries are subject to requirements under South Coast AQMD Rule 1118 – Control of Emissions of Non-Refinery Flares and must notify our agency of flaring events when the volume of combusted gases is expected to reach reporting thresholds identified in the rule. This is an ongoing investigation”.
Gwen Henry, a board member of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council, said that a lot of people were paying attention to a lot of noise that took place on Feb. 1, a few days after the shutdown.
“I live about a mile and a half away,” Henry said. “And it sounded like there was a lot of ruckus coming from the refinery. It sounded like jet engines.”
However, none of the representatives from Phillips 66 could give a definitive reason for the noise. Seidel said they needed to start up their boilers and create steam, and said the venting of the steam could be the reason for it.
“One of the locations that we can put steam in the event of those sequencing startups, is we put steam up the flares themselves,” Seidel said. “And they’re designed to handle a lot of steam as well as handle the gasses. So that could have been a result of some of the noise that you were hearing on Wednesday.”
Henry said that a full flame when flaring is good, as it cleans the chemicals out without releasing them into the air. She said that it’s bad if the flame is not that pronounced when flaring, or opaque smoke, or even worse, black smoke. Henry said that people should call the AQMD at 1-800-cut-smog if they see these things.
Seidel said that the first 48 hours after the shutdown were probably the most impactful when it came to steam and flaring, but said that there was more flaring afterwards as the refinery was restarting. He claimed that the venting of the steam was not loud enough to damage the hearing of anyone outside the refinery.
“The noise was not extensive, where it could be damaging to the ear,” Seidel said. “But it’s still a disruption and we understand that.”
Melanie Labrecque, board member of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council and head of a neighborhood watch, said that a lot of people complained about their houses shaking, hers included.
“I thought it was an earthquake,” Labrecque said.
Labrecque said it was like a jet was over her house, the vibrations were that bad. She tried to call a representative of the refinery, but his phone was full, and not receiving messages.
“Part of the problem is, Saturday, when that happened, there was major flaring reported,” Labrecque said. “And at that time there was a lot of H2S [hydrogen sulfide], it seemed like the smell of rotten eggs in the air, it was heavy. A lot of people were affected by it on Saturday and Sunday. And then there was a smell of fuel, that a lot of people smelled, over by the Home Depot area.”
Labrecque argued that when something like this happens, it’s important to tell the neighborhood council so that it can put information about it on its website, or on neighborhood watches, or an email blast.
Seidel said the hydrogen sulfide smell is concerning but claimed that none of the monitors at the facility detected any.
“H2S is a really interesting chemical,” Seidel said. “I mean, go do some research, even on the CDC site, and the odor threshold for that can be extremely variable, and extremely low for people.”
No one at the meeting mentioned what happened in Carson in 2021, when a chemical warehouse fire resulted in hydrogen sulfide coming from the Dominguez Channel. The smell lingered for nearly two months, caused intense headaches, stomachaches, nausea and vomiting in Carson residents.
Seidel said that when the refinery uses flaring, the flares do not release any acute harmful emissions. He did not mention if they release any long-term harmful emissions.
Seidel claimed that OSHA says that workers at the refinery can safely be exposed to 10,000 parts per billion of the emissions for an eight-hour workday, but that the refinery’s monitors go off when they detect 30 parts per billion.
Phillips 66 did not respond to requests for comment on this story.