Changing Locomotion in Midstream: California’s Ethanol Mandate (Part 2)

Alexis Madrigal — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:57:28 +0000

Editor’s note: Yesterday, guest contributor Alexis Madrigal introduced the rationale behind California’s ethanol mandate, and alluded to some of the “behind-the-scenes” changes that the mandate required. Today, he takes a look at one piece of the California ethanol infrastructure.

II. The Geography of Green

In northern California, the major incoming station for ethanol is the NuStar Selby Terminal outside Crockett, in unincorporated Contra Costa County.

At places like Selby, rail cars filled with ethanol are unloaded into holding tanks, then eventually transloaded into a truck (or a pipeline) that delivers the fuel to a refinery. The Big Oil refiners splash-blend it with hydrocarbons inside tanker trucks into what the state calls gasoline.

That’s one of the things that Selby’s manager, Mike McDonald got shipped to California to do, after his last post at a refinery in the Caribbean. He’s sturdily-built with closely cropped hair. In his blue coveralls, it’s obvious he’s no suit or hipster. When I show up uninvited at Selby early one evening, after weeks of trying to get the NuStar press handlers to call me back, I catch McDonald still working.

And why wouldn’t he be? Selby never stops working. The terminal operates 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. It can store three million gallons of liquid fuels, the vast majority of it being oil.

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Changing Locomotion in Midstream: California’s Ethanol Mandate (Part 2)

II. The Geography of Green