<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Judge: Port of Seattle free to host Shell rigs

The Columbian
Published:

The much-disputed lease of Port of Seattle property as a base for Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet was affirmed Friday by a King County Superior Court judge who ruled that the Port didn’t need to conduct an environmental review to use Terminal 5 for that purpose.

The decision, a victory for the Port and Foss Maritime, comes just two weeks before a hearing examiner will consider a similar challenge to the lease by the city of Seattle.

“We believe the facts support the judge’s decision and we’re glad to be able to move on to the next step,” Port of Seattle spokeswoman Susan Stoltzfus said after the ruling.

She said the Port hopes for the same outcome from the hearing examiner.

Foss originally floated the plan to use Terminal 5 as a home port for Shell’s oil rigs in January. Port CEO Ted Fick signed the two-year lease with Foss in February, saying it would create hundreds of jobs and keep revenue flowing in as the terminal is upgraded to accommodate bigger container ships.

A coalition of environmental groups sued the Port and Foss in March, arguing that an environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act was necessary because mooring Shell’s oil rigs at Terminal 5 changed the use of the terminal. The Port said Terminal 5 was exempt because that was essentially the same as its previous use as a cargo terminal.

Environmentalists have been up in arms over the lease, citing Shell’s track record and the impact of fossil fuels on climate change.

Activists hit the bay in kayaks when the oil rig Polar Pioneer arrived in early June and again when the vessel departed for Alaska.

This week protesters suspended themselves from a bridge in Portland to block one of Shell’s icebreakers from joining the exploration fleet.

Superior Court Judge Douglass North said the legal question in front of him was whether the Port acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it bypassed the environmental review.

Earthjustice lawyer Patti Goldman, who is representing the four environmental groups — Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, the Sierra Club, Washington Environmental Council and Seattle Audubon Society — said it did. She argued the Port disregarded the facts when deciding the use of Terminal 5 would be essentially the same, and therefore exempt from SEPA.

Judge North disagreed.

“I can’t say the Port’s determination that this falls within the existing use of a cargo terminal is arbitrary and capricious,” he said from the bench Friday in granting the Port of Seattle’s motion for summary judgment.

Whether the activities Shell and Foss plan at Terminal 5 are described as home porting, vessel supply or a storage depot, “all of those kinds of things are what normally goes on at a cargo terminal,” the judge said.

Goldman said she was disappointed in Friday’s ruling and will have to talk to the four groups before deciding whether to appeal.

The definition of a cargo terminal will play a larger role when the Port and Foss challenge a city ruling on the lease, scheduled on Aug. 13.

Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development said in May that Terminal 5’s current land-use permit as a cargo terminal did not allow for the long-term moorage and maintenance of Arctic drilling equipment, but Foss and the Port quickly appealed.

“The judge’s ruling Friday confirms what we’ve known all along: Terminal 5 is properly permitted to tie up these vessels, sometimes for extended periods,” Foss spokesman Paul Queary said in a statement. “We look forward to the hearing examiner reaching the same conclusion.”

The Polar Pioneer left Elliott Bay in June for a short summer drilling season in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s North Slope, with plans to return to Elliott Bay for the winter.

Loading...