Attaining the Ozone Standard in the San Francisco Bay Area: The Petroleum Industry’s Role in the Planning Process

The petroleum industry has a major presence in the San Francisco Bay area. There are five refineries located here, and they produce fuel for much of northern California, along with other products. Over the last two decades, these refineries have made major reductions of both VOC and NOx, and produced reformulated fuels. The petroleum industry through its trade association, the Western States Petroleum Association, has participated in planning exercises in the Bay Area for those two decades. In 1986, WSPA and its member companies were leaders in establishing the California Regional Air Quality Studies program-an industries, agencies cooperatively funded program, with the intent of developing aerometric monitoring programs designed to provide data for model development, model performance evaluation and associated data analysis. Under CRAQS, three major air quality studies have been done, the 1990 San Joaquin Valley Air Quality Study, the 2000 Central California Ozone Study (CCOS) and the 2000 California Regional Particulate Air Quality Study. WSPA has participated in the Technical Advisory Committee for all of these studies, and has also participated in the Bay Area Air Quality Management District's Modeling Advisory Committee, which has used the CCOS episode as part of its current modeling effort. WSPA has provided funding for these efforts and supported technical participation by member companies in belief that any planning effort must have a sound technical basis if it is to produce plans that improve air quality.