• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Proposed Legislation to Expand Water Shipping in Oklahoma

Posted on: Tuesday, 10 January 2006, 21:00 CST

By Janice Francis-Smith

Legislation awaits action in Congress that would allow Tulsa- area companies to transport a lot more goods for a little more money along Oklahoma's waterways.

That is really important for the economy of Oklahoma, said U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who is pushing for passage of Senate Bill 728.

The legislation contains several revisions to the Water Resources Development Act that will have an impact in Oklahoma. Among other things, the bill would direct the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to move forward on a project to deepen portions of the channels leading to the Port of Catoosa. Most of the channel is already 12 feet deep, but about 10 percent of the channel is only 9 feet deep.

Let's talk about west Oklahoma wheat, Inhofe said. If you can get that to market by getting it up from a 9-foot channel to a 12-foot channel, you can transport five times as much wheat on the same barge.

Denny Gibeson of Missouri-based DeBruce Grain Inc., said the upgrade would certainly be good for the company. DeBruce is building a new waterfront terminal at the port with the capacity to store 30,000 tons of fertilizer product and 500,000 bushels of grain. DeBruce's shipments alone are expected to increase Port tonnage by as much as 20 percent over the next few years.

It's just a matter of hauling more freight in the same conveyance with only incremental additional costs of freight to bring it up, Gibeson said.

The port is at the head of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, a 445-mile waterway linking Oklahoma and the surrounding five-state area with other ports inland and with international ports in the Gulf Coast area. More than 2 million tons of cargo is shipped through the Port of Catoosa each year in about 1,300 barges, and since opening for business in 1971, the port has served more than 33,000 barges carrying more than 52 million tons of cargo.

The project contains a number of other facets, including maintenance dredging and new disposal sites, said project manager Dan Brueggenjohann of the Corp of Engineers. But the barging industry has been asking for the upgrade, which will cost $165 million to complete.

I know it's high priority for the barging industry and that they've been working on this initiative for some time, Brueggenjohann said. We have determined that approximately two- thirds of the benefits are realized in the upper reach of the river, meaning the large quantity of grains going out of the Port of Catoosa and the large quantify of fertilizers going into the Port of Catoosa. That's certainly a high point with the cost/benefit ratio for the upper reaches of the river.

Glen Cheatham of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation's waterways division said deepening the channel does not require any alternations to the lochs and dams along the waterway.

That will make it a more efficient operation for the shippers and for the barge companies, because they can move about a third more tonnage per barge with the same equipment and relatively very little fuel increase to move the additional tonnage, Cheatham said. So what it amounts to is you would move the equivalent of 15 barges with essentially a 9-barge tow.

Cheatham thanked Inhofe for is work on the legislation.

Senator Inhofe has been very instrumental in getting authorization for the project, and he's working for the appropriations for the project now, he said. We're on go. We're just like everybody else - waiting on a little money so we can go to work.

Source: Journal Record - Oklahoma City

More News in this Category