Canada Tar Sands to Benicia?

David Baker at the Chronicle keep up his good business-environment reporting.

To oil company Valero, adding rail lines to its Benicia refinery represents a way to tap cheap, domestic crude by train, cutting costs and tanker traffic on the bay.

To environmentalists mobilizing to stop the project, it’s a potential entry point for low-grade oil from Canada’s tar sands, and a possible health threat.

Valero’s proposed Crude by Rail project is just one of several planned changes at the Bay Area’s oil refineries, the second-largest refining cluster on the West Coast behind the Los Angeles area.