According to an investigation by the refinery, the cause of Monday’s oil spill into the bay was an old, corroded pipe with a “pinhole” leak. The county would like to know what the refinery is doing to prevent any repeats of this in the future. The next leak may be much larger, and not discovered so quickly.
This raises serious questions about the aging infrastructure at the refinery. What would the impact of more than doubling the number of deliveries by ship be? It is known that the new deliveries would be tar sands oil from Canada. A spill of that material would have a more costly impact on the bay than the light crude that was spilled this time. Tar sands crude is also far more corrosive than light sweet crude which would cause old pipes to leak sooner.
Read the full story here from KQED.
