Kinder Morgan vs. NuStar Energy Facility

On Tuesday, October 15, 2019, a substantial fire ignited and burned for 7 hours at the NuStar Energy fuel storage facility in Crockett.  With the Kinder Morgan Tank Farm/Terminal located in Brisbane, this raised a lot of concerns in the community: Could the same thing happen here?  Officials from North County Fire Authority provided reassurance that Kinder Morgan and the NuStar facility operate differently.  For one, Kinder Morgan does not store ethanol in the quantity that the NuStar facility does.  The NuStar facility is also much larger, where the fire consumed 250,000 gallons of ethanol (which was only 1% of the affected storage container’s capacity).  The tanks in Kinder Morgan’s Brisbane Terminal primarily store gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and on-site capacity is much less than at the facility in Crockett.  

Another difference between the facilities is that the NuStar facility is tied to an oil refinery in Crockett; the Brisbane Terminal is not, as it is a storage and distributing facility, supplied via underground pipelines for distribution throughout San Francisco and the Peninsula.  According to the Department of Transportation, "Pipelines are the safest and most cost-effective means to transport the extraordinary volumes of natural gas and hazardous liquid products that fuel our economy."  The City of Brisbane has created a page dedicated to Kinder Morgan FAQs for the community to get more information about their operations, and inspection schedules  – North County Fire Authority has a response procedure in place to support and augment Kinder Morgan’s emergency response plan should there ever be an incident.  That FAQ page can be found at: archive.brisbaneca.org/kinder-morgan-faqs.