OILAGARCHY
Tanker Industry Resists Efforts
to Safeguard Washington Waters
...but Environmentalists Make Some Gains

by Fred Felleman, MSc
Free Press Contributor

Early last year, President Clinton quietly lifted, like a well-oiled garage door, the 23-year-old ban on the export of Alaska crude. In so doing, Clinton avoided drawing much press attention to this deal between the oil industry and the U.S. government, which exploits one of this nation's last great wilderness areas, Alaska's North Slope, for export oil consumption.

These developments mean increased revenue for Big Oil. They also mean growth and changes in the mix of traffic calling on Washington waters. Industry data demonstrates Washington's waters are currently the busiest in North America. Projections of the numbers and sizes of foreign owned and operated tankers and freighters calling on ports in Washington and British Columbia are alarming. Washington State is also home to the nation's largest ferry system, highest per capita pleasure boat ownership (and mortality rate), and soon the second-largest naval fleet.
Despite these facts, efforts to fill an obvious maritime safety gap between Grays Harbor and Port Angeles have been met with highly financed opposition from the maritime industry, as well as Coast Guard indifference and hostile Congressional committees chaired by members of the Alaska delegation, some of whom are seemingly owned and operated by Big Oil.

Tug of Little Opportunity
Senator Patty Murray's amendment to the Alaska Oil Export Bill called for rigorous response times to aid disabled or leaking vessels. Members of the Alaska congressional delegation replaced this with an ill-defined "Tug of Opportunity System" (TOS). The concept behind the TOS is that since there are many tugs working in these waters, chances are there might be one near the scene of a vessel in distress. Under such a system tugs may be able to respond to a disabled vessel in a reasonable time, but the industry does not have to commit to any specific time limit.

Furthermore there can be no assurance that, even if a tug was in the vicinity of a stricken vessel, it would be of sufficient size and horsepower or that its crew would be adequately trained to give a tanker meaningful assistance. Perhaps of greatest concern, if a tug is in the vicinity, chances are it will already have a tow. Therefore, the crew will have to either anchor their tow (most barges do not carry anchors) or cut it free, either option posing additional risks and slowing the response time.
When President Clinton lifted the Alaska oil export ban, he required the Coast Guard to make criteria to evaluate the TOS, and directed the Secretary of Transportation to see that the final plan passed the laugh test. The President gave special attention to the waters of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, which at 3,000 square miles is
the third largest of the
14 sanctuaries in the country.
The Coast Guard was in charge of developing an oil spill response strategy for Washington, to be overseen by the federal Department of Transportation (DOT). The Coast Guard held several public meeting on the TOS and submitted its evaluation to Congress on January 31st. While the Alaska Oil Export Bill calls for a system which provides "emergency response," the Coast Guard's TOS provided only a basic communication framework designed to enhance the time to dispatch a tug for rescue towing. It was not a response system. The response times set by the Coast Guard criteria were especially lax at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and off the Olympic Coast Sanctuary (6 and 12 hours respectively). The industry, however, wants even longer response times based on overly optimistic predictions of vessel drift rates.
"The latest report from the
Exxon Valdez Trustee Council
finds that the bald eagle is the
only species considered
recovered from the 1989 spill."
Fortunately DOT, which oversees the Coast Guard plan, agreed with environmental watchdogs who questioned the effectiveness of the TOS. Now the Coast Guard has redetermined that the TOS by itself does not afford adequate protection to the coast and outer Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The critical step before us is for the DOT to conduct a credible risk assessment that will not only identify risks, but also evaluate the relative benefits of different safety measures. However, the way risk assessment is conducted will determine the credibility of its results. Public involvement is a big factor in this credibility. Some critics do not feel comfortable with this study being done by the DOT, for it was the same DOT who did not oppose the speed limit being raised on our highways despite the certain increases of fatal accidents and wasted fuel.
The flimsy TOS system would have been implemented a long time ago if it were not for the legal standing, technical documentation, and public awareness generated by the Makah Tribal Nation, the Washington State Office of Marine Safety, Ocean Advocates and other environmental organizations. But the ability of Senator Murray and Congressman Dicks to appeal directly to President Clinton has increased the likelihood that the Washington waters will be assured significant protection from future oil spills.
They have sought to fill the safety gap by either stationing a rescue tug in Neah Bay, near the northwest tip of the Olympic peninsula, or by extending the distance tankers need to be escorted by tugs by 70 miles farther out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In addition, the Coast Guard could be required to close the Sound to shipping when conditions exceed the capabilities of the existing tug fleet. But this battle for proactive prevention efforts is far from over.
Prince William Sound in Alaska had only a TOS as their front line of defense prior to Exxon's infamous and indelible spill in 1989. It is now used to back up a far more capable system that includes up to four tugs and response vessels following tankers throughout their transit through those waters. Prince William Sound is now closed to traffic when wind speed exceeds 40 knots. A rigorous risk assessment was recently completed which concluded that these actions, especially the tug escorts, have reduced the risk of a spill by 75 percent.
By April, an 11,000 horsepower rescue tug will be stationed at the entrance to Prince William Sound, which will reduce the risk of a spill by another 75 percent. While the costs of such systems are significant, the cost of not taking such precautions are greater. The latest report from the Exxon Valdez Trustee Council finds that the bald eagle is the only species considered recovered from the 1989 spill.

More Dollars than Sense
This leads to the issue of public oversight. There used to be four regional marine safety committees, a marine oversight board, and a maritime commission, all of which provided opportunities for public involvement in Washington State. Currently, there is just the Advisory Committee of the Office of Marine Safety (OMS), which meets quarterly.

Given that the oil and shipping industries are among the richest corporations in the world and some of the largest campaign contributors, there is a tremendous need to counter this bias in influence with open public access to critical decisions. The establishment of a Regional Citizens Advisory Council, modeled after the one in Prince William Sound, would provide needed oversight of the maritime industry and would enable legislators to receive informed testimony from constituents other than vested interests.
NOAA has recently funded the University of Washington's School of Marine Affairs to establish what they presumptively refer to as a "Smart" Forum. The problem is that this publicly funded forum, intended to facilitate communication among the constituents of the marine environment, has been held without public notices and without opportunity for public comment. It is now poised to be lobbying for specific legislation.
Perhaps tired of fighting over specific regulations like the tug in Neah Bay, a particularly derelict contingent of the maritime community, foreign tanker owners, brought suit against Washington state last year, claiming that its tanker regulations were unconstitutional. The Federal district court's ruling against Intertanko's claims of federal preemption set an international precedent in support of a state's authority to protect itself from oil spills. Area newspapers carried a small wire service story in the local section, but heads were spinning in corporate board rooms around the world. Big Oil, having more dollars than sense, has just appealed Judge John Coughenour's emphatic affirmation that "...the oil spill prevention laws legitimately protect Washington's delicate and valuable marine resources through the exercise of the state's police powers."
In a report published last November, the State of Washington's non-partisan Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee further affirmed that what OMS has been doing since 1991 is not only legal, but appropriate. The review committee concluded that the OMS should not be folded into the Department of Ecology (DOE) in June 1997 as is currently possible due to industry-backed legislation.
Despite the committee's support, OMS may have to struggle for survival. Many of our state legislators, like Karen Schmidt (R- Bainbridge Island), who chairs the Transportation Committee, obviously don't understand the importance of spill prevention. Schmid attempted in 1995 to merge OMS into the DOE through an appropriations bill, a maneuver which was found in court to be unconstitutional. The public will have to either impress Governor Locke with the need to keep OMS independent or pass the Marine Waters Initiative (I-188) to preserve the integrity of the OMS. Due to the storms during last holiday season, petition gatherers were not able to collect enough signatures for this legislative session. However, I-188 has been refiled and petitions will be hitting the streets once again.
The call for the merger of OMS with DOE has always been spuriously tied to cost-cutting issues. However, the Office of Financial Management released a report in August 1996 which found the merger, rather than saving money, would result in net costs of $80,000 for the first biennium and $12,000 for subsequent biennia, due to higher average overhead costs at DOE.
Even if a case could be made for some small savings by merging the agencies, it would be more than offset by the loss of focus on a spill prevention program. This is particularly important in light of the financial influence the maritime industry is able to peddle through the legislature. For example ARCO has been the largest campaign contributor to the state legislature for the past several years.
A recent story in the Post-Intelligencer demonstrates the industry's influence at the federal level as well. It was reported that Senate supporters of lifting the Alaska oil export ban received an average of $64,460 each from the oil industry, while those who opposed lifting the ban received just over $12,000 each since 1991.
Photo courtesy of Wildlife and Visual Enterprises:
Fred Felleman & Beth Miller

Perverse Incentive
Whether or not OMS remains an independent agency with a dedicated mission, there still is the need to fund the state's oil spill prevention and response program. That program is currently funded by the barrel tax paid by oil shippers who bring oil into and out of the state at the rate of a nickel per barrel. The Office of Financial Management found one of the primary reasons for the program being underfunded is the fact that the shippers are rebated the nickel if the oil is exported out of the state. So if a tanker comes in to Washington, putting our waters at risk once, they pay the barrel tax. But if that oil is refined and exported, putting our waters at risk twice, they pay nothing!

The export rebate is a bad idea for three reasons. First, being the only state on the west coast with such a rebate creates a perverse incentive for oil shippers to move oil across our waters twice as often, thereby increasing our risk of a spill. Second, the rebate has created an accounting nightmare, which in turn, has led to uncertainties in revenue forecasts for the agencies. Finally, we could be creating an incentive to significantly increase the amount of oil moving through our state to neighboring states via pipeline. In this way we would be further increasing the risk of an oil spill to all the inland waters of our state and potentially not generating any revenue to address this growing risk.
The issue of considering taxing pipeline revenues without removing the rebate is particularly worrisome, given the Olympic Pipeline Company's $100 million proposal to pipe oil over the Cascades, thereby connecting refineries based in Puget Sound with the oil markets in the Rocky Mountain States. The Olympic Pipeline Company, which is owned by ARCO, Texaco and GATX, has already had at least three spills from their existing line during the course of the past year.
Ultimately, the best spill prevention measures will be achieved through conservation and alternative fuels. If we use less oil, we ship less oil and spill less oil. But until we get ourselves off the oil habit, we need to assure that these rich corporations take prudent safeguards if they do business in Washington waters. Furthermore, our elected officials must realize that, while expanding trade is good for our economy, our government needs to assure that we are not mired in the slick excuses of the oil industry.


Fred Felleman is a conservation biologist and photographer specializing in the marine environment. He championed the creation of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, was appointed to the Washington State Maritime Commission, and currently represents the nonprofit organization, Ocean Advocates, on the Office of Marine Safety's Advisory Committee.



[Home] [This Issue's Directory] [WFP Index] [WFP Back Issues] [E-Mail WFP]

Contents on this page were published in the March/April, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
WFP, 1463 E. Republican #178, Seattle, WA -USA, 98112. -- WAfreepress@gmail.com
Copyright (c) 1997 WFP Collective, Inc.