The Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub, shown here in an undated provided photo, is a six-mile stretch of Northwest Portland where hundreds of tanks store more than 300 million gallons of fuel on soil that would become unstable during a major earthquake.
Courtesy of Multnomah County
More than 90% of all liquid fuel in Oregon is stored along a 6-mile stretch of the Willamette River just north of downtown Portland known as the Critical Energy Infrastructure hub. Studies have shown that a major earthquake could cause the release of as much toxic liquid as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, with oil reaching all the way to the mouth of the Columbia River.
This fall, the city released a draft proposal to reduce the fuel stored at the site and require seismic upgrades. Eric Engstrom, director of the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, joins us to explain the plan.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. More than 90% of all liquid fuel in Oregon is stored along a 6-mile stretch of the Willamette River in industrial Northwest Portland. It’s known as the Critical Energy Infrastructure hub. It’s on top of unstable soil and a major earthquake could cause a toxic spill that might reach all the way to the mouth of the Columbia River. At 4 p.m. today, the Portland Planning Commission will take up a draft proposal that would reduce the fuel stored at the site and require seismic upgrades.
Eric Engstrom is the director of the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. He joins us now to talk about what’s in this proposal and why. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Eric Engstrom: Glad to be here.
Miller: Let’s just start with the basics. What is the CEI and what’s its purpose?
Engstrom: It’s a collection of large storage tanks where fuel is stored on the way to market, essentially. As you said, it supplies most of the fuel in the state of Oregon on its way to market.
Miller: What are the nightmare scenarios for what could happen there?
Engstrom: Earthquake, spill, as you mentioned. It’s right below Forest Park so there’s also concern about fire. And it’s right in the backyard of St. John’s and Linnton as well, so a lot of neighborhood concern about safety.
Miller: OK, so that’s some important context. What prompted this CEI hub policy project?
Engstrom: This is a policy issue that a lot of Portlanders have had opinions about for years. The public safety aspect is one significant part. It’s also part of the city’s climate action planning. We need to decarbonize our energy supply over the coming decades, both buildings and transportation. It’s a multi-decade prospect. We need to transition to a more robust electrical grid, but that takes time. Not all machinery is immediately electrical, big equipment or aviation, for example.
Miller: Back in the fall, four alternatives for how to proceed, in terms of this new plan, were presented. They ranged from allowing the expansion of renewable and aviation fuels, all the way to the prohibition of all fuel expansion and a 17% reduction in existing storage – that was the range that was there in the fall. How did you go from those four alternatives to the one that’s being considered today by the planning commission?
Engstrom: We talked to a lot of people. There were a lot of stakeholder meetings over the month of August [with] neighborhoods, business groups. [We] considered a lot of data and ended up with – we heard a lot of public testimony – overwhelmingly I’d say, concern about public safety.
Miller: How much of that testimony was from people who are in the immediate vicinity?
Engstrom: Some significant amount, but it’s a citywide concern.
Miller: Did you also hear from industry?
Engstrom: Absolutely, both from waterfront industries as well as the Port of Portland with the airport, with the aviation fuel, and then just generally, this is a matter of statewide economic concern, obviously.
Miller: I’m glad you brought that up because it’s a funny combination, it seems, of stakeholders. There are people who live or work right there. And then there are people in John Day, or in Enterprise, or in Lakeview, hundreds of miles away, who rely on the fuel that is stored there before it’s trucked to where they are. How does the city of Portland think about the statewide issue?
Engstrom: The thing before us right now is a question of what are the city’s zoning and development regulations that apply to the expansion of this site in the future or to changes they might make.
Miller: As opposed to what do Lakeview residents need in terms of energy infrastructure?
Engstrom: Yeah, but that question is obviously as important. So there’s a larger effort that is a statewide effort to think about, how we want to supply liquid fuels 20 or 30 years from now and what kinds of fuels we are going to need? That’s a really important exercise. That’s a next step beyond what we’re doing now. I’m grateful that the state agencies are engaged in this process. And I’m hopeful that Portland can participate in that larger discussion.
Miller: OK, but I take your point. Let’s focus on the issue actually at hand today that the planning commission will take up and that is fully in the city’s current purview. So, can you walk us through what you see as the highlights of the proposed policy?
Engstrom: Currently, the Portland Code restricts the expansion of these facilities. But there’s an exemption for aviation fuel and renewable fuels, as in plant-based fuel rather than dinosaur fuel. The proposal on the table before the planning commission would remove those exemptions and also add a 20% reduction in capacity of those facilities over the next decade.
Miller: What’s the thinking behind removing those exemptions? And I should say at the beginning, one of the options that was presented a couple of months ago would have kept those exemptions. So why remove the exemptions, meaning no expansion possible even for aviation fuel or renewable fuels?
Engstrom: We heard a lot of public testimony about the safety concerns, and renewable fuel and aviation fuel is also a safety hazard at that location. So that’s partly the driver of it. But the 20% drawdown was calibrated on the forecasting of what we think, realistically, the state’s fuel needs are going to be over this time period. And it is realistic that we’re looking at a slight reduction in demand over that decade. So that was the logic.
Miller: Has that estimation changed at all because of the direction the current administration is going? The miles-per-gallon (MPG) fuel standards, all of a sudden a huge question mark there. There’s such skepticism about the transition to electric vehicles. There are some things that seemed like they were a given internationally and in our country just a couple of years ago that now seem to be fully up for grabs again.
Engstrom: Yeah, agreed. This is calibrated to state and regional forecasts. And even with that dynamic, Portland, the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, as a whole, continue to aggressively move towards our climate goals of electrifying transportation and building energy.
Miller: How did the commission propose this particular timeline, with 2036 as a target, for that 20% drawdown requirement?
Engstrom: It’s in tandem with a state requirement for seismic upgrades over that same time period. So it just is, as a practical matter, easier to have the same horizon.
Miller: What are the seismic safety improvements that would follow from these amendments?
Engstrom: These amendments don’t change the safety requirements. That’s a state initiative coming out of state agencies. But there is a requirement on the table for seismic upgrades to the tanks where the fuels are stored over the next decade. And they have to make those … there’s a time period imposed by that state rule.
Miller: And is the idea that if the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake happens after those improvements, that [none] of these tanks would fail or that a certain number wouldn’t fail? I mean, how good is the seismic upgrade that we’re talking about?
Engstrom: I’m not an engineer, but I think the intent is to drastically improve the likelihood of a good outcome in that situation.
Miller: What would it have meant for this CEI hub to be moved? Instead of talking about the changes here, in terms of state-level seismic upgrades and city required drawdowns, to say, we don’t want this to be here, it will go somewhere else.
Engstrom: Yeah, we heard a lot of testimony to that effect. And I guess I’d give you an analogy. The facilities rely on a lot of pipeline connections. There’s a pipeline from the Puget Sound that supplies a lot of the fuel. They’re on the railroad for a reason, because that’s a delivery mechanism. They’re on the river, they’re by the highway. It’s kind of like moving your kitchen, in a house remodel, to the other side of the house. It’s really hard to disconnect all the plumbing and the other systems that are in a fixed location.
So, we looked at that. But we don’t think that that’s a feasible option over the next foreseeable future.
Miller: Is part of the challenge that nobody else would want this kind of industrial infrastructure anyway? I mean, even if you were to say this is not the best place for it?
Engstrom: There’s not any better place in Portland. A lot of Portland’s waterfront is challenged seismically. A lot of other parts of Portland, where we could put it, also have natural resource areas. So there’s not a good place for it.
Miller: One of the changes that caught my attention is that the amendments that are being considered today get rid of a few mentions of the region’s energy needs. But obviously, those needs remain. What’s the thinking behind that language change?
Engstrom: There was ambiguity in that language that was wrapped up in litigation over the last decade on this issue. So getting rid of that language helps us be less ambiguous. I think that’s a technical change.
Miller: The process now, as I understand it, is that the planning commission can say, “yay” or “nay,” or they can amend the current language in front of them. Once they say yes to something, then it goes to the full Portland City Council. Do you have a sense right now for where the planning commission and the council are leaning?
Engstrom: We’re going to find out a little bit more of that this evening. I know a lot of people are going to be testifying. And then it will also probably go to a council committee on the way to council, so that’s going to be a factor. We have heard from a lot of members of city council with a great interest in this project, so I know they’re tracking it.
Miller: Eric, thanks very much.
Engstrom: Thank you.
Miller: Eric Engstrom is the director of the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. Later this afternoon, the Portland Planning Commission is going to consider amendments that would reduce the fuel stored at the Critical Energy Infrastructure hub in Northwest Portland.
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