Pier 400 Meetings Leave Residents Mixed on Plan

By Dennis Lim MORE SAN PEDRO

Through a series of four presentations held in San Pedro and Wilmington from Jan. 14 to 21, more light was shed on the plans to develop the largest petroleum marine terminal on the west coast in Los Angeles Harbor.

With a crew of consultants and piles of written reports on its project, Pacific Energy Partners, L.P., elaborated on its plans to dredge and develop the terminal on Pier 400 at Berth 408.

As envisioned, the project would occupy 58 acres spread over six plots of land. Most of that land would be used to house between 20 and 26 crude oil tanks.

Deeper harbor waters — 81 feet — next to the terminal would allow it to accommodate the world’s largest oil containers. Today those ships have to unload part of their cargo onto another ship to clear the shallower waters next to the crude oil terminals in the port.

According to Pacific Energy Partners, electric-powered pumps would suck the crude from the ship into the tanks. By doing that the ships would not have to use their own gas-powered engines to pump the crude out, and in the process would reduce emissions from the large ships.

The $300 million development’s two-year construction would generate 3,900 direct and indirect jobs. Its regular operation would directly employ 32 people and another 87 indirectly — mostly tug boat operators.

But the biggest message Pacific Energy Partners constantly repeated throughout the four presentations was the country’s, and particularly California’s, growing need for imported oil.

“The basic problem is we’re running out of domestic sources of oil,” said David Wright, executive vice president of corporate development at Pacific Energy Partners.

“By 2019 oil pumped in California will decline by 305,000 barrels. Oil from Alaska has already reached its peak and is continuing to decline. Those declines come at the same time as California’s demand for oil will increase as its population increases.

“What we hope to do is to provide the infrastructure for the needed imported oil in a very clean way with little impact on the community,” Wright said.

Most of the oil to be imported into the marine terminal would come from the Middle East and Latin America. From the Pacific Energy terminal the crude would be routed to the local refineries through a series of underground pipes.

Noel Park, president of the San Pedro and Peninsula Homeowners Coalition, and other residents at the meetings disagreed with the presentation of the project as environmentally friendly.

Park disliked the format of the presentation that didn’t allow for public comment to be heard by everyone. Also, he said air pollution needed to be mitigated.

The extra air pollution from the giant tankers the terminal would accommodate — among the largest in the world — would result in an extra 20 tons of diesel particulate matter, by Park’s calculation. The added pollution would result in more premature deaths and asthma cases in San Pedro, he said.

“They’re like, ‘We have to make money and if a few kids have to get asthma or some people have to die premature deaths because of it, so be it,’ ” Park said.

Aesthetically, he added, the tankers coming into the terminal and its many storage tanks would be a blight on the view of the port.

Park suggested Pacific Energy Partners commit to the port’s plan of no net increase in pollution by reducing its emissions or paying to reduce the discharges of other operations in the port. He suggested a similar plan to solve the aesthetic problems.

“If you’re going to create ugliness, then go into our community and create some beauty,” Park said. “Hell, they can buy the land for Welcome Park and call it Pacific Energy Partners Park. I don’t care. That’s being a good neighbor or just common decency.”

Wright disagreed with and dismissed Park’s comments. He noted that the efficient operation — using one ship to unload oil, instead of two — and the electric powered pumps would make it less harmful to the environment than other oil terminals in the port.

“Some people are just going to be against us,” Wright said. “No matter what we do, they will never be persuaded. This project is finally doing what Pier 400 was built to do, to handle the port’s hazardous fuels far from the community.”

Pier 400 was constructed in 2002 as a central location for the port’s terminals that handle the most dangerous items. But since its construction it has been used mainly as a container terminal for Maersk, a shipping company.moreLOCAL NEWS