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Collection: Northwest Coal & Oil Exports

Columbia River Ship Traffic: the Impact of Coal and Oil Plans

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Like the Salish Sea, the Columbia River is threatened by the risks of oil spills. If you need proof of the risk, look no further than the historical record of major spills or the dozens of recent close calls on the river. In fact, the Coast Guard sector responsible for the region that includes Grays Harbor plus the Columbia and Snake Rivers responds to 275 oil pollution incidents in a typical year.

Yet the risk of spills could soon increase dramatically. If they are built, new fossil fuel shipment proposals would result in huge increases to both oil and other petroleum ship movements, as well as to overall large vessel traffic on the Columbia River.

Using the Washington Department of Ecology’s “Vessel Transit and Entry Counts” database, we calculate the average volume of ship and barge traffic over the last decade and compared that to the number of vessel trips that would be induced by newly built and planned fossil fuel sites in the region.

The result? We find that new crude oil and petroleum product facilities could triple the number of tank vessels—tanker ships and tank barges—crossing the Columbia River’s notoriously dangerous bar.

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Sightline Seeks to Daylight Secret Exemptions to Crude Oil Export Ban

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What I see, by Asher Isbrucker, cc
What I See by Asher Isbrucker used under CC BY 2.0

For nearly four decades, the US federal government has maintained a “ban” on exporting domestic crude oil supplies. It’s been a cornerstone of the national energy landscape since President Ford signed the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act into law in pursuit of that perpetual goal of American politicians, energy independence.

Although the legal framework includes a number of exceptions—allowing exports of North Slope Alaskan and heavy California crude, as well as exports to Canada, among other loopholes—big oil companies have had the ban in their crosshairs for years. Now, in the midst of a production boom (despite moderate domestic demand), the industry has launched a lobbying assault on federal officials in the hopes of further boosting the payoff for large-scale fracking and drilling. And their efforts appear to be paying off.

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Salish Sea Ship Traffic: the Impact of Coal and Oil Plans

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The Northwest’s most important waters are under a near-constant threat of oil spills. It’s a fact made plain by the historical record of major spills and the dozens of recent close calls, as well as the best available data and modeling analysis of oil spills risks.

Yet the risk of spills could soon increase, perhaps dramatically. A spate of new fossil fuel shipment proposals could well generate very large increases in both oil transport and overall vessel traffic in places like the Salish Sea. To provide a clearer picture of what’s ahead, we crunched the numbers. Using the Washington Department of Ecology’s “Vessel Transit and Entry Counts” database, we calculate the average volume of ship and barge traffic over the last decade in contrast that to the number of vessel trips that would be induced by newly-built and planned fossil fuel sites in the region.

The result? We find that new crude oil facilities could create a 40 percent increase in the number of tank vessels—tanker ships and tank barges—crossing the Salish Sea.

Original Sightline Institute graphic, available under our free use policy.
Original Sightline Institute graphic, available under our free use policy.

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Coal Export Markets in Freefall

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For more than two years, the US coal industry has predicted that international coal prices would soon rebound, breathing new life into coal export and mining proposals that are now languishing on financial life support. But despite the industry’s hopes, the bottom keeps falling out of the global coal market.

Market conditions for Pacific Rim coal exporters are now worse than they’ve been since the depths of the global recession. After peaking in early 2011 at more than $130 per ton, the price of benchmark Australian coal has fallen for nearly 4 consecutive years. In December, they reached a 5-year low of $62 in December, according to the World Bank.

But the futures market predicts that the worst is yet to come. The futures price for December delivery of Australian coal has fallen to $57 per ton, with the price collapse accelerating in recent months.

Why New Improved Oil Trains Are Not Nearly Good Enough

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Last February to much fanfare, the oil company Tesoro—a firm with big plans for oil trains in the Northwest—announced that it would voluntarily replace older tank cars with newer models.  In the technical parlance of the rail industry, the firm meant that they would upgrade or replace the legacy DOT-111 tank cars to be compliant with the CPC-1232 standard.

The idea sounded promising at first blush, but a closer inspection reveals that Tesoro’s move was more about posturing than public safety. The upgraded standards the company is trumpeting are far from safe enough—a reality that was shortly made clear by a massive oil train fire in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia involving these same tank cars just two months after Tesoro’s announcement. As the flaming oil wreckage in the James River demonstrated, Tesoro’s proposal was little more than a cheapskate’s way of continuing business as usual despite powerful evidence that much more is needed.

To see why the standard favored by Tesoro isn’t good enough, here’s a look at the details.

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Northwest Oil Spills: The Raw Data and the Growing Risk

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When most people think of an oil spill, they imagine something like the Exxon Valdez grounding. While it’s certainly possible that a mishap of that magnitude could occur in the Northwest, the truth is most oil spills are far more mundane. They are also much more frequent, and arguably more damaging, than you might think.

Take Puget Sound, for example. During the 38-month span from December 2009 to January 2013, there were 757 confirmed spills in the Sound—nearly 20 per month. Accidental bilge discharges, overfilling fuel tanks, and a rather surprising number of vessels sinking—four different pleasure boats sank and spilled oil in December 2011 alone—are common. Every now and again we might here about a peculiar one, like the 416 gallons spilled when crews loaded diesel into a leaky tank barge or the 36 crushed cars that fell into Commencement Bay, but most often they receive little media attention.

The raw data show that vessels in Puget Sound are a steady source of oil contamination.

Original Sightline Institute graphic, available under our free use policy.
Original Sightline Institute graphic, available under our free use policy.

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Northwest Ships: Near Misses and Almost-Spills

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The Northwest is evaluating more than a dozen major projects that would add oil tankers and other major cargo ships to the region’s waters. Nearly all of these plans would affect Washington’s waters: either on the Columbia River, Grays Harbor, or in the labyrinthine channels of the Salish Sea. In the simplest terms, increasing ship traffic means increasing risk. And as the region is contemplating an astonishing jump in vessel traffic, it’s worth pausing to examine the record.

As with actual oil spills, near misses are frighteningly common. Natural phenomena, like winds and tides, compound human blunders to result in collisions and groundings (and narrowly averted ones). Alongside these mishaps are countless instances of mechanical failure. They do not always spill oil, but the risk is nearly omnipresent.

For example? In the months of November and December 2011 alone, large bulk or container vessels, often carrying hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel oil in single-hulled tanks, experienced nine separate incidences of mechanical failure or a loss of propulsion in Washington waterways. During that same two-month period, three different laden oil tankers drifted into dangerous collision courses with other vessels, prompting Coast Guard authorities to intervene. Indeed, episodes of tank vessels straying into the path of oncoming traffic, and vice versa, occur with startling regularity, spared only by Coast Guard operators hundreds of miles away who happen to notice an unusual blip on their screens.

Oil Tankers Inbound by Pieter Van Marion (CC)
Oil Tankers Inbound by Pieter Van Marion used under CC BY-NC 2.0

In other cases, the catastrophes were not so much averted as simply avoided by blind luck. Had events unfolded just a bit differently, Washington’s most important waterways would been subjected to another major spill.

Below is an abridged collection of cases when things very nearly went very wrong.

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Which Washington Legislators Take the Most Coal, Oil, and Gas Money?

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Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, WA. Photo by Dana, cc.
Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, WA. by Dana used under CC BY-ND 2.0

The 2015 Washington legislative session promises to be one of the more contentious in recent memory. Governor Inslee is advancing bills to reduce carbon emissions and better regulate oil transport, while the Republican-dominated Senate vows to obstruct his agenda. Both issues will pit fossil fuel companies—and especially Big Oil—against the governor.

It is, then, an opportune time to daylight the fact that the major opponents of the proposed legislation are also the state’s biggest recipients of dirty energy money. We analyzed records from the Washington Public Disclosure Commission, as well as several national political funding online databases, to track campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry to every elected official in the state during the last election cycle.

Direct donations

The top three recipients are all members of the state Senate, the chamber best positioned to block the governor’s bills. They are:

  1. Democrat Timothy Sheldon (District 35) – $19,300
  2. Republican Andrew Hill (District 45) – $19,100
  3. Republican Douglas Ericksen (District 42) – $17,600

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Fifty Years of Oil Spills in Washington’s Waters

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Washington’s coastlines and waterways are at a threshold. Battered by a legion of insults—polluted runoff, shoreline development, carbon-induced acidification, and more—there is no guarantee that the Northwest can continue to support the vibrant natural systems it is known for. The region’s native orcas are struggling; key populations of shellfish and herring may be dying out; and even its flagship species, the salmon, are endangered in many places. And what is perhaps the biggest threat of all looms like a specter: a catastrophic oil spill.

Every day the region faces the risk of an oil spill. Though Washington officials have been more diligent in their preparations than their counterparts elsewhere, there is good reason to believe we are not prepared. In fact, a review of the record shows that our business-as-usual approach has let us down at many times and in many places.

Certainly, we are not up to the task of protecting Northwest waters from the titanic increases in oil transport planned by pipeline companies, refineries, and would-be exporters. To understand why, it helps to recall our history lessons. The fact is that Washington has already suffered numerous damaging spills.

Here are a few of the worst.

Pacific Coast (March 1964)

A tugboat towing a barge loaded with gasoline from the Ferndale refineries was making a delivery run down the outer coast to Coos Bay, Oregon when the tow line ran off its winch drum during a storm in the middle of the night. Set adrift, the 200-foot barge, which was carrying 2,352,000 gallons of gasoline, diesel, and stove oil, soon grounded on a sandbar several hundred yards offshore between Moclips and Pacific Beach, just south of the Quinault Indian Reservation.

Rough surf pounded the stranded barge and stymied the Coast Guard’s initial efforts to pull it free. It took more than five days, and the assistance of another tug dispatched from Grays Harbor, before workers were finally able to move the barge off the bar, but while they struggled 1.2 million gallons of petroleum leaked into the water. The spill fouled beaches from the Quinault Reservation south for 10 miles, killing untold numbers of seabirds. Wildlife researchers also reported massive shellfish deaths: 32,000 pounds of razor clams were killed by the spill, and officials immediately closed clam digging everywhere north of the Copalis River.

In an out-of-court settlement, the United Transportation Company eventually agreed to pay $8,000 in damages—about $61,000 in today’s dollars.

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Sightline on Kinder Morgan and Columbia River Energy Schemes

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If you’re following Sightline’s work on Northwest fossil fuel exports, you may enjoy listening to this radio segment I did recently on KBOO, a community radio station in Portland. The piece is around 45 minutes long, which allows time to explore many of the dimensions that we covered in our recent report, The Facts about … Read more

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