One-Two Punch Hits ExxonMobil Trucking Plan
Phillips 66 Embraces Renewable Energy, Will Pull Plug on Oil
A one-two punch that very few people saw coming is now posing sudden, unexpected, and potentially unanswerable questions about the viability of ExxonMobil’s proposal to transport up to 70 truckloads of crude from its Las Flores Canyon facility on the Gaviota Coast to Phillips 66’s Santa Maria Pump Station outside of Santa Maria. Early the Thursday morning of August 13, Phillips announced its intention to shut down its oil refining operations at the company’s Rodeo refinery located outside San Francisco — the ultimate destination for ExxonMobil’s Las Flores crude — and repurpose that industrial facility into a refinery for fats, greases, soybean oils, and other renewable energy sources. According to a Phillips press release, the company hopes that production can begin as soon as 2024. The same statement reported the company’s intention to shut down the Santa Maria transfer facility, where the Las Flores crude was to have been transferred from trucks into Phillips’s Line 300 pipeline to the Rodeo facility. The Santa Maria facility is scheduled to be shut down in 2023.
“This is a very big deal,” said Errin Briggs, the chief energy planner for the County of Santa Barbara. “A very big, big, big deal.” Briggs said Phillips’s decision “pulled the carpet out from underneath us,” referring to both the County Energy Division and ExxonMobil. The county, he said, had no advance warning from Phillips 66. As to how surprised he said he was by the announcement, Briggs said, “Extremely.” As to how much warning ExxonMobil got, he added, “No warning.”
Phillips 66’s decision goes beyond ExxonMobil. When asked to assess how many other operators along the Gaviota Coast would be affected, Briggs said, “Pretty much every single one of them.” He said the Phillips facility in Santa Maria offers two modes of entry into the pipeline heading north to the Rodeo plant. First, it allows oil trucks to offload into the pipeline, and secondly, it offers oil operators a direct portal into the pipeline itself. He said three oil companies — Freeport-McMoRan, PCEC, and a Sentinel — will find themselves forced to find new accommodations for their oil. The quantity of oil affected is significant; it could be in the ballpark of many thousands barrels a day.
