News / Opinion / Columns

Jayne: Pace of oil terminal process could be key to project’s fate

By Greg Jayne

Published: January 31, 2016, 6:01am

The educated guess is that a large majority of Clark County residents never gave a second thought to the goings-on at the Port of Vancouver. The port was that place where ships came and went and widgets were loaded and unloaded and we could occasionally gawk at the massive vessels from Frenchman’s Bar Park.

That all changed 2 1/2 years ago. That all changed as an overriding disinterest gave way to rapt attention when port officials entered an agreement to build the nation’s largest rail-to-marine oil terminal along the shores of the Columbia River. So, while the rest of us have been climbing a steep learning curve to become familiar with oil trains and Tesoro Corp. and the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, we have been playing catch-up to Jim Luce.

Luce, a Vancouver resident, was chair of EFSEC from 2001-13. In other words, he understands this stuff, and there probably is nobody better qualified to explain a process that will culminate with the governor giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to the project. That process is laborious and convoluted — as it should be when you are talking about bringing 360,000 barrels of crude oil into the community each day. For those who don’t have a calculator handy, that’s more than 15 million gallons of oil per day — a fact that points out the transformative impact this project could have on Vancouver.

For the record, Luce is opposed to the oil terminal, and he helped found Taxpayers for a Responsible Public Port in the wake of the port commissioners’ approval of the project.

Yet while Luce is an advocate on one side of the issue, he more importantly is an expert on how it will go down — which meant that it was helpful to sit down with him for a cup of coffee. Among the revelations, Luce noted that the public comment phase of the process generated some 250,000 responses. Is that the most he has seen? “By a factor of maybe 20,” he said.

In other words, people have noticed what is going on at the port — and that is a tribute to the residents of Clark County.

But what about the process? Luce said that stakeholders now will begin testifying in adjudicative hearings, responding to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement: “It’s going to be a lot of lawyers wanting to cross-examine witnesses.” From there, a final statement will be prepared and be sent likely in September or October to the governor — whomever that might be.

Who will decide?

Which brings us to the crux of this column. Because while Tesoro and Savage and port officials have complained about the glacial pace of the permitting process, logic dictates that they would like it to drag out. Given Gov. Jay Inslee’s record on environmental issues, proponents of the oil terminal are being Pollyannaish if they think he will approve it. And with Inslee up for re-election, it is a safe bet that those proponents would prefer that the process drag on until January and that a different governor would be making the final decision.

Last year, Tesoro donated $39,024.58 to campaigns in Washington, with $8,500 of that going to terminal proponent Lisa Ross in her unsuccessful race for a spot on the port commission (her opponent, Eric LaBrant, received about $100,000 in in-kind donations from Washington Conservation Voters). In 2012, the last year with a gubernatorial election, Tesoro donated $137,550 in Washington, including $100,000 to the Association of Washington Business PAC.

But with an environmental governor in office and an oil terminal proposal on the table, the stakes are higher this time for Tesoro; a change in the governor’s office could dictate the future of the project. “I think it’s safe to say the progressives would like to see this decided sooner, and Tesoro would like to see it decided later,” Luce said. “A known is better than an unknown, and from a progressive perspective, Gov. Inslee is a known.”

It’s also a safe bet that the people of Clark County will be paying attention this time around.

Who will decide?

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