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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2019
Petroleum terminal expands to
allow more oil trains into Portland
By TONY SCHICK
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Natalie St. John/Chinook Observer
Robert ‘Tony’ Merrill in Pacifi c County Superior Court.
Former Long Beach
go-kart owner sentenced
for drug, gun deals
Merrill gets
six years in
state prison
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
Chinook Observer
SOUTH BEND, Wash.
— The strange case of
drug-and-gun-dealing
amusement park owner,
erstwhile fugitive and Sci-
entology rehab patient
Robert “Tony” Anthony
Merrill is almost over.
On Friday, visiting
Superior Court Judge
James Dixon denied Mer-
rill’s request to delay sen-
tencing for a third time,
and sentenced him to six
years in state prison.
Following spring 2017
raids on his home and his
downtown Long Beach
go-kart and amusement
complex, Merrill was
arrested on numerous
drug-related charges.
Prosecutor
Mark
McClain added additional
charges after investiga-
tors linked him to a sto-
len gun-peddling ring,
ultimately charging him
with 49 felonies. Merrill
skipped bail and fl ed to
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico,
where United States mar-
shals eventually captured
him.
In
April ,
Merrill
pleaded guilty to 10 felony
charges, including residen-
tial burglary, drug posses-
sion, running a drug house,
bail jumping, traffi cking in
stolen property and render-
ing criminal assistance.
Merrill’s parents bailed
him out again and sent him
to a Church of Scientolo-
gy-run rehab in the Cali-
fornia desert .
His case was fur-
ther complicated when
his attorney was elected
Grays Harbor County
Superior Court j udge and
a Pacifi c County d eputy
p rosecutor who had han-
dled much of his case was
appointed Pacifi c County
Superior Court j udge.
At the conclusion of his
hearing, Merrill, 53, read
a statement to the court.
He thanked his loved
ones and lawyers and a
corrections offi cer and
acknowledged the police
who busted him were
“doing their job,” accord-
ing to a press release from
McClain.
Merrill said he felt
hopeful that he would be
able to turn his life around,
and planned to make the
most of his time in prison
by participating in col-
lege, job-training and vol-
unteer programs. Finally,
Merrill said some of his
closest friends died as a
result of their addictions,
so he felt lucky to be alive.
McClain was also
relieved to see the case
nearing its long-awaited
conclusion.
“I was thankful that the
judge denied yet another
continuance in this mat-
ter, as we had objected to
these delays,” McClain
said in the press release.
“But in the end, having
Mr. Merrill off the streets
and in prison has made
our community safer.”
A Portland petroleum ter-
minal is signifi cantly expand-
ing its capacity to unload rail
cars, a move that sets the
stage to more than double
the number of oil trains along
the Columbia and Willamette
rivers into Oregon’s biggest
city, Oregon Public Broad-
casting has learned.
Zenith Energy, sand-
wiched between the river
and Forest Park in the city’s
northwest industrial district,
began receiving train ship-
ments of crude from Can-
ada’s oil sands last year,
records show, which it stored
in tanks and later pumped
onto ocean-going vessels.
Zenith’s outpost in Port-
land now has visible con-
struction underway on a proj-
ect to build three new rail
platforms that will nearly
quadruple the site’s previ-
ous capacity for offl oading
oil from tank cars, according
to building plans fi led with
Portland in 2014, which the
city’s Bureau of Develop-
ment Services confi rmed.
When operational, a ter-
minal with such a capac-
ity could handle multiple oil
trains per week — a sizable
increase over Zenith’s 2018
operations. According to
Oregon Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality estimates,
the site handled fewer than
30 full oil trains throughout
last year.
The site’s expansion of
crude-by-rail infrastructure
comes despite much pub-
lic resistance in the North-
west for new oil projects.
That includes a vote by Port-
land’s City Council in 2016
to oppose any new fossil fuel
infrastructure. That same
year the Northwest experi-
enced fi rsthand one of the
oil-train mishaps that have
occurred across North Amer-
ica as more and more oil has
been moved by what critics
have dubbed “rolling pipe-
lines” and “bombs trains.”
Public records and inter-
views with state offi cials
indicate those trains would
carry a kind of heavy oil
that presents a new risk for
Northwest communities and
rivers, and one the state’s
Tony Schick/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Construction at the Zenith Terminals site in northwest Portland.
emergency spill responders
say they are ill-equipped to
contain if it spills.
“It greatly complicates
the spill. It’s going to take
a lot more money and time
and cause a lot more harm to
the environment probably,”
said Scott Smith, who regu-
lates the Zenith terminal’s oil
spill preparedness as part of
the Department of Environ-
mental Quality’s emergency
response program.
He said the increased oil-
by-rail traffi c creates a risk in
Portland of an environmental
disaster like the one in Mich-
igan in 2010, when heavy
Canadian oil spilled from a
pipeline into the Kalamazoo
River. It took more than fi ve
years and $1 billion to clean
up.
“It’s really among the
most challenging spills we
have out there, and if it was
a large spill, it would cause
quite a bit of damage,” Smith
said.
Zenith declined to com-
ment on how the project
would affect its ability to
unload more crude oil, saying
only that the project would
allow it to fi t additional rail-
cars on site and minimize the
need to shuffl e cars around.
“The multimillion-dollar
project will provide an even
safer and more effi cient oper-
ation,” Megan Mastal, a pub-
lic relations representative
for Zenith Energy, said in an
emailed statement.
The
company
also
declined to say what prod-
ucts it would handle. Mastal
disputed that Zenith would
be handling what’s known
as bitumen, which is a type
of petroleum extracted from
Canada’s oil sands. It is thick
like peanut butter and often
diluted with other petro-
leum products before it is
transported.
“We are not handling bitu-
men crude through our termi-
nal,” Mastal said.
Records show the facility
did handle diluted bitumen
in 2018, and the Department
of Environmental Quality
said it anticipates the facility
will be handling heavy crude
from Canada’s oil sands.
Recent site inspections
from the state Department of
Transportation found railcars
with the placard UN 1267
(Petroleum Crude Oil) on
the tracks outside the Zenith
facility, and that the cars were
from Canada. Photographs of
cars at the terminal from ear-
lier this month also show cars
with the 1267 placard, along
with a placard warning of
toxic inhalation.
Five years ago, the site
was an asphalt plant in lim-
ited operation when a com-
pany called Arc Logistics
Partners LP, later acquired
by Zenith Energy, purchased
it and shifted operations to
crude. That transition coin-
cided with the North Ameri-
can oil boom and subsequent
spike in oil moving by rail.
While those shipments have
declined since their peak
nationally, data from the
Energy Information Admin-
istration show oil by rail has
reached its highest level in
three years, driven largely by
Canadian oil.
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