The proposed oil terminal is an idea that is quickly outliving its usefulness, and it isn’t even operational yet. Award-winning journalist Nafeez Ahmed explains, in a recent piece titled “Inside the new economic science of capitalism’s slow-burn energy collapse,” that fossil fuel return on investment has been in a steady decline from its peak in the 1930s and ’40s, costing more energy to extract each barrel of oil than it did before.
Add to this evidence that production of the Bakken oil fields has declined significantly since 2014. It begs the question, what exactly do Texas companies — Tesoro and Savage — hope to achieve by building the nation’s largest rail-to-marine oil transfer station in our community?
It is time for the Port of Vancouver, and all of Clark County, for that matter, to begin acting on what we want our community’s legacy to be. We are at a crossroads. Do we cling to a dying industry with a long history of leaving social and environmental decay in its wake? Or do we move forward with opportunities that stand a better chance of creating a safe, healthy and sustainable community?
Today we’re helping to choose which road will be taken. I choose forward.