Shannon S. Broome

The text from the client came around 2 p.m. while Broome, the leader of Hunton Andrews Kurth’s environmental practice, was working from home in Oakland. An explosion and fire were ripping through two ethanol storage tanks at NuStar Energy LP’s Shore Terminals facility in Crockett, 20 miles north.

It was October 15, 2019. Broome, a chemical engineer and the managing partner of her firm’s San Francisco office, didn’t hesitate. “I jumped in the car,” she said. Authorities had closed the freeway as black smoke billowed from the site. She navigated surface streets, talked her way past police lines and grabbed a hard hat, safety shoes and goggles from the trunk.

“In that kind of situation, the first thing is to ensure that people are safe,” she said. She remained for hours at the chaotic scene, where law enforcement officials were unsure what they were dealing with. The facility is a key conduit for California’s renewable fuels. “They got a search warrant, because their arson unit needed to see if there was a crime involved. We were texting with the DA and helping as we could.”

To captain the client’s regulatory and litigation response to the incident that night and in the days that followed, Broome mobilized a Hunton team of about 25 lawyers from the firm’s environmental, cybersecurity and criminal practice groups and served as primary go-between with the government’s regulators and investigators. She achieved return-to-operation in record time, following initial government orders prohibiting operation. With broad news coverage spurred by immediate shelter-in-place orders, she addressed NuStar’s public response, from front line regulators to the governor’s office to district attorneys, helping the Texas-based company steer through California’s challenging regulatory environment.

To date there has been no official report on the cause or origin of the blast and no litigation, Broome said, though the Bay Area Air Quality Management District has issued notices of violation. “The company was very responsive, but this is a long process. When two tanks are destroyed, that’s a big event.”

As a lawyer, she said, her first concerns were to protect against any spoliation of evidence and to negotiate with the government agencies involved, including air quality officials and the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health. “There are no indications this was anything other than an accident, but we await the final report.”

Broome was well-suited for the task. Before law school she got a chemical engineering degree at UCLA and worked at a Chevron Corp. refinery there. “Now, as an environmental lawyer, my job is to keep the right legal protections in place for my client. Most legal work is more routine, but this was a fun kick in the pants. There was a lot of adrenaline. It’s what I love doing.”

— John Roemer