OREANDA-NEWS. A California county planning commission has set hearings on 4-5 February regarding US independent refiner Phillips 66's plan for a crude-by-rail spur track and unloading terminal at the Santa Maria unit of its 120,000 b/d San Francisco refining complex.

The project would allow the refiner to take up to five approximately 80-car unit trains of crude per week, putting its capacity it just under 38,000 b/d. It would involve extending an existing spur track off of the Union Pacific mainline and construction of a ladder-track unloading site.

A final environmental impact report issued recently concluded the project would have several "significant impacts" that can modified to "less than significant" levels, including air quality, noise and vibration, wildlife and water resources.

It also found that the primary "significant impacts" that cannot be mitigated would occur in case of a fire or explosion related to the crude shipments on the mainline only, because trains on the spur line itself should be moving too slowly to be involved in a disaster.

A key question throughout the report revolves around mitigation of impacts along the Union Pacific mainline. Because federal authorities traditionally regulate interstate railroads, the state and county might be preempted from calling for certain mitigations, such as using lower-emitting Tier 4 locomotives.

The report analyzed three alternatives: rejecting any rail site, replacing the ladder-track unloading design with a loop track and reducing the refiner's projected delivery schedule.

Killing the project altogether would eliminate all construction-related costs to the environment, the report said, but it would result in greater truck traffic that would result in higher greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change. A rail loop would result in fewer emissions because it would reduce locomotive running time needed to break trains apart on site, but construction and visual impacts would be greater.

The report found that reducing the number of weekly trains to three from five would "offer some environmental advantages over the" existing project, including lower cancer risk associated with unloading operations. But assuming 80-car unit trains, capacity would fall to less than 23,000 b/d.

"This is clearly a dirty and dangerous oil train project that is not in the community's best interest," Valerie Love with the Stop Oil Trains Campaign said, citing the report's 11 "serious and unavoidable" health and safety impacts.

Santa Maria's crude operations have suffered since June, when Plains All American Pipeline's Line 901 crude line ruptured into the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara. The line has remained shut since the accident.

Phillips 66 did not respond to a request for comment.

This week, a report issued by the San Francisco Bay city of Benicia concluded that the "environmentally superior" option there would be to cancel a similar project by Valero.

Hearings are continuing on a draft environmental report regarding Tesoro's proposed 360,000 b/d crude-by-rail transloading terminal planned for Vancouver, Washington, near Portland, Oregon.