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PG&E ignored gaps in data, engineer says

A key Pacific Gas and Electric Co. gas engineer testified that he repeatedly told his bosses the company was relying on flawed data to vouch for the safety of its gas transmission lines before the San...

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Chevron response to refinery fire under criticism

Investigators were looking at how a small, seemingly insignificant leak at one of the country's biggest oil refineries quickly unraveled into an intense fire that sent acrid black smoke into the sky...

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Chevron’s tense relations with Richmond

Growing up in Richmond in the 1960s, Andres Soto would watch flares from the Chevron refinery light up the night sky. Pretty cool, he remembers thinking.

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Chevron considered replacing pipe

Chevron officials initially deemed the pipe that failed dramatically last week, causing a major fire at its Richmond refinery, as possibly needing replacement last year but ultimately cleared it for...

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Chevron fire ignited by idling rig?

The Richmond refinery fire that sent more than 9,000 people to emergency rooms could have been touched off when a cloud of flammable vapor reached an idling and abandoned Chevron fire truck,...

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Chevron refinery fire a ‘close call’

The chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board toured the scene of the Chevron refinery fire Monday and released photos of the gigantic vapor cloud that loomed over Richmond before it caught fire.

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Chevron emergency plan didn’t avert fire

Chevron engineers drafted a detailed plan aimed at averting a hypothetical disaster nearly identical to the real-life fireball that erupted at the Richmond refinery's crude-oil processing unit.

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Huge gaps in oversight for industry full of risks

A San Francisco Chronicle investigation launched after the Aug. 6 fire that destroyed part of Chevron’s Richmond, Calif., plant and sent thousands of residents to hospital emergency rooms found that...

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Few concrete answers to the Chevron fire

The agencies investigating the fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond sought to assure residents Monday that they would hold the company accountable and use lessons from the Aug. 6 blaze to prevent...

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Too few state oil refinery-safety checks

California regulators have not been conducting the intensive workplace-safety inspections of Chevron's Richmond plant and the state's 14 other oil refineries that federal standards call for, a...

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Criminal investigation at Chevron refinery

Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of Chevron after discovering that the company detoured pollutants around monitoring equipment at its Richmond refinery for four years and burned...

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Corrosion blamed in 2011 Chevron refinery fire

Unchecked corrosion, the suspected culprit in the August blaze that destroyed part of Chevron’s Richmond refinery, was responsible for another fire at the plant last year that prompted workers to...

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Chevron fire moves governor to form task force

Gov. Jerry Brown has formed an interagency working group on refinery safety after questions emerged following a fire at Chevron's Richmond refinery about whether California is diligently inspecting oil...

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Chevron firefighters may have gouged pipe

The pipe that fed a huge fire at Chevron's Richmond oil refinery in August appears to have been punctured from the outside, possibly by company firefighters trying to get at a small leak before the...

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Gas exports will boost solar industry, exec says

CEO Arno Harris said Recurrent Energy's new solar plants will sell power for as low as 7 cents a kilowatt-hour, nearly as cheap as natural gas-fired plants. He favors gas exports because they could...

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Bridge-crash tanker’s last-minute shift

The pilot of the oil tanker that hit the Bay Bridge last week apparently decided at the last minute to change course and head between a different set of bridge towers, a tricky maneuver that may have...

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Bar pilot panel slow to act on complaint

San Francisco -- The California commission that polices bar pilots who navigate ships through San Francisco Bay has gone nearly a year without acting on an extraordinary complaint against a captain...

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Obama faces angry liberals over pipeline

President Obama is barreling toward what one Bay Area activist predicts could be "all out warfare" with environmentalists who want him to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline.

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Tactics divide agencies in Chevron probe

A grand jury probe targeting Chevron in last year's Richmond refinery fire has created a rift between the federal agency investigating the incident and environmental regulators seeking possible...

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Commentary: Battle lines forming on carbon tax

For a political non-starter, a carbon tax is generating an awful lot of activity on Capitol Hill. Texas Reps. Joe Barton and Jeb Hensarling will headline a press conference Wednesday slamming the idea.

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