CLATSKANIE, ORE. — The oil-by-rail terminal at Port Westward near Clatskanie, Ore., laid off more than half its workforce Thursday.
Global Partners LP, the Massachusetts company that operates the Columbia River terminal, said in an investor release that it was eliminating 70 jobs at facilities in Oregon and North Dakota and at its corporate offices and moving from handling oil back to handling ethanol in Oregon.
There were 28 jobs lost in Clatskanie. Before the layoffs, the terminal employed 47 people, according to the Port of St. Helens, which oversees Port Westward. The layoffs were due to “expense management” in the face of “severe headwinds affecting the crude oil market,” Global Partners said in a statement.
Dan Serres, conservation director for the environmental group Columbia Riverkeeper, which opposes the proposed oil terminal in Vancouver, said financial problems at the Oregon terminal “show how a public port linking its economic future for one of these boom-bust cycles is potentially a recipe for a real failure in the community.”
