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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2022
Cascadia earthquake could trigger major oil spill
By SHANE DIXON
KAVANAUGH
The Oregonian
Portland area offi cials
are sounding the alarm on a
potential nightmare scenario
in which a major Pacifi c
Northwest earthquake trig-
gers one of the largest oil
spills in U.S. history — and
seeking ways to diminish the
scale of the catastrophe.
A massive earthquake
that is widely expected to
strike off the coast of Ore-
gon would unleash millions
of gallons of fossil fuels into
the Willamette and Columbia
rivers, cause deadly fi res and
cost billions of dollars to mit-
igate, a report commissioned
by Portland and Multnomah
County and published this
week shows.
Meanwhile, Oregon law-
makers took the fi rst steps
Monday to require the own-
ers and operators of the state’s
main oil storage facilities
— located mere miles from
downtown Portland — to
upgrade their aging, and some-
times decrepit, fuel tanks.
State Sen. Michael Dem-
brow, a Portland Democrat,
received an initial hearing
on a bill he introduced that
would authorize the Oregon
Department of Environmen-
tal Quality to more aggres-
sively regulate fuel storage
containers.
Under the proposal, their
owners by 2024 would need
to assess the risks from earth-
quakes and propose ways to
minimize likely ruptures and
spills. The legislation would
also require state regulators
to develop an energy security
plan in preparation for major
natural disasters.
“We’re living with a tick-
ing time bomb,” Dembrow
said during a Senate Com-
mittee on Energy and Envi-
ronment hearing on the bill.
About 90% of Oregon’s
liquid fuels are stored at
what is known as the Critical
Energy Infrastructure Hub in
northwest Portland. The pri-
vately owned industrial area
Mark Graves/The Oregonian
Crude oil tank cars pictured at Zenith Energy’s terminal in northwest Portland.
THE ECOLOGICAL DEVASTATION COULD STRETCH NEARLY 100 MILES
WEST TO ASTORIA AND THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER.
runs along a 6-mile stretch
of the Willamette River in
between the Fremont Bridge
and Sauvie Island.
At least 11 companies at
the site, from Zenith Energy
to oil giant Chevron, oper-
ate more than 600 storage
tanks full of gasoline, jet fuel
and diesel, report authors at
ECONorthwest and Salus
Resilience found.
Portland offi cials have
been working to crack down
on Zenith’s fuel storage and
offl oading operation.
In August, the city rejected
a land use designation needed
by the company to renew an
operating permit with state
environmental
regulators,
claiming its fossil fuel activ-
ity ran afoul of the city’s cli-
mate and resiliency goals.
Other fuel tank facilities
in the area may face a similar
fate in the future.
Eden Dabbs, a spokes-
woman with the Bureau of
Planning and Sustainability,
which crafted the city’s cli-
mate policies, said Thursday
that Portland offi cials would
conduct an identical land use
compatibility review for the
remaining fuel storage com-
panies at the time each is
required to renew its state air
quality permit.
A spokesman for the Ore-
gon Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality, which
issues those permits, could
not provide exact renewal
dates for the remaining com-
panies. But the spokesman,
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Harry Esteve, said the agency
would only seek a city land
use review in cases where a
facility sought a signifi cant
change in its operations.
A magnitude 8 or 9
mega-earthquake
would
likely cause soil in the area to
liquify and cause the release
of up to 194 million gallons
of stored fuel, according to
the study. That would dra-
matically exceed the 134 mil-
lion gallons released into the
Gulf of Mexico in 2010 after
the Deepwater Horizon oil
spill, which remains the larg-
est to occur in the U.S.
“The fuel releases are
likely to cause explosions and
fi res,” wrote the researchers.
“If the fi re spreads to other
properties there are very large
threats to human life, safety,
physical structures and natu-
ral resources.”
An estimated 1,000 water-
front properties in Ore-
gon and Washington could
be damaged by the massive
oil spill, according to the
report. The ecological dev-
astation could stretch nearly
100 miles west to Astoria and
the mouth of the Columbia
River.
All told, a massive earth-
quake would cause a mini-
mum of $2.6 billion in dam-
age, including clean-up costs,
property repairs and environ-
mental remediation.
Researchers noted the
storage area was built
decades before the region’s
earthquake risk was deter-
mined. Some fuel tanks are
more than 100 years old.
Many were built at least 50
years ago.
“We know these things are
pretty old, the average tank
age for the data that we do
have is 1954, which is well
before any of the seismic
standards we have today,”
Laura Marshall, a project
manager for ECONorthwest,
said during a press confer-
ence Monday that detailed
the report’s fi ndings.
Dembrow, who also spoke
at the press conference, urged
immediate action.
“Government needs to
step up to make sure that
these fuel tanks are in posi-
tion to withstand the worst
eff ects of this shaking and
liquefaction to protect life
and environment,” he said.
“Right now, the necessary
oversight is fragmented or
outright lacking.”