Puget Sound faces prospect of more oil tankers
Saturday, December 31, 2005 10:48 PM PST
By Associated Press
Printable version
E-mail this articleSEATTLE -- Most of the people in Washington state live near the shores of spectacular Puget Sound, a sheltered glacial estuary teeming with wildlife and vessel traffic that is tucked behind the forested Olympic Peninsula, its climate softened by mountain ranges to the east and west.
Five busy refineries on its shores turn crude oil into fuels. Hundreds of tankers ply its waters every year, yet the sound has never seen a major oil spill.
But a push to loosen a decades-old limit on tanker traffic in the sound has environmentalists and Washington politicians worried that record might be sullied.
Figuring that increased oil traffic means increased risk, Washington's congressional delegation and environmental activists have long worked to hold traffic down -- beginning with Democratic U.S. Sen. Warren G. Magnuson's 1977 amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which describes the sound as "a fragile and important national asset."
The amendment bars federal permits for any expansion of Puget Sound refinery capacity to handle crude oil, except as needed for state consumption. Written the year oil began to flow from Alaska's North Slope, it halted plans for a supertanker port at Cherry Point near Bellingham.
Magnuson also secured a Coast Guard rule limiting the size of oil tankers in Puget Sound to 125,000 deadweight tons and 35 million gallons of crude, well below supertanker scale: 188,000 deadweight tons and more than 50 million gallons.
The five refineries have a processing capacity of about 576,000 barrels of crude oil per day, said Frank Holmes with the Western States Petroleum Association, citing 2003 figures. About 61 percent of refined product stays in the state, he said.
The daily intake works out to about 24.2 million gallons of crude -- more than double the 10.8 million gallons spilled in 1989, when the Exxon Valdez ran aground with a full load of crude in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
This year, legislation was offered in both houses of Congress to scrap the Magnuson amendment. The House measure died when Democrats Jay Inslee and Norm Dicks and Republican Dave Reichert joined forces to kill it.
The Senate measure -- still in committee -- was proposed by Alaska's powerful senior senator, Republican Ted Stevens.
But regional resistance is so strong that Mike McGavick, an insurance executive seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, told Stevens during a fundraising visit to the Capitol that the idea was a nonstarter.
"I though it appropriate ... that I drop by and let him know that it was my view that changing the Magnuson amendment was unacceptable in my state, and that view crossed all party lines," McGavick says.
Stevens, thwarted twice this year in his bid to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, sees the 28-year-old amendment as an antiquated provision that limits refining capability on the West Coast.
Repealing Magnuson would allow expansion of the Sound's refineries.
"It makes it so the rest of the West can remain reliant on American products ... rather than going abroad," said Stevens spokeswoman Courtney Boone. Boone said.
Washington's refineries already ship to other states, and BP, the owner of the state's largest refinery, has increased its crude-processing capacity from 120,000 barrels a day in 1971 to 225,000 barrels today, said spokesman Bill Kidd. About 30 percent of the Cherry Point refinery's output is shipped out of state.
"There is a large demand on the West Coast and we're short somewhere around 10,000 barrels a day of gasoline and 50,000 barrels a day of jet fuel," Kidd said. Demand is increasing at a rate of about 2 percent a year, he added.
In and around Seattle, political opposition is strong. Gov. Christine Gregoire is opposed to repealing the amendment. Cantwell, who helped defeat Stevens' ANWR measure, also opposes repeal.
At the north end of the sound, where the refineries play a key role in local economies, the issue is not so clean cut.
"We're not interested in seeing the environment damaged, but we do have people who need jobs," said Mayor Jerry Landcastle of Ferndale, near Cherry Point. "They're very good corporate neighbors, very supportive of our communities."
But the local environmental community is adamantly opposed.
"When you get right down to it, the ecological risk trumps the economic potential and in fact it drives the economic potential way down," said North Sound baykeeper Wendy Steffensen of RE Sources in Bellingham.
More than 600 oil tankers visit Puget Sound annually. Refined products are transported around the sound and along the coast by 3,000 tank barges and some tankers.
In Alaska, tankers make up 90 percent of vessel traffic, compared to 15 percent in Puget Sound, said Kidd at BP. In the sound, tankers share crowded waters with recreational boats, commercial fishing vessels, barges, ferries, massive container ships and a sizable chunk of the U.S. Navy.
Fred Felleman of Ocean Advocates, which works to protect marine habitat in Washington state, argues that the heavy traffic underscores the need for more protection in congested Puget Sound,
"Washington has a very good oil-spill record, because of the legacy of Senator Magnuson and those who followed him," said Felleman.
"But it's completely irresponsible to use the past to predict the future," he said. "If Stevens wants to help us improve the safety net, then we can talk about taking on the additional risk."
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