Companies resist push for oil spill cleanup plan

SEATTLE – State regulators are pushing for more oil spill cleanup ships – now – but petroleum companies want more time to study the proposal, an industry official says.

In a statement issued Wednesday, state Ecology Department Director Jay Manning said a new study found a shortage of ships available to clean up a hypothetical 420,000-gallon oil spill in the San Juan Islands.

The agency pointed to the study as it called on the oil industry to immediately start building a larger oil spill fleet in Puget Sound and along the coast.

“A significant oil spill is a very real threat, and we have to be able to stage a rapid and aggressive response,” Manning said.

Manning said oil handlers should not wait for the state to issue new rules requiring more ships. Those rules could go into effect in June 2006, he added.

Industry leaders are not likely to jump at Ecology’s suggestion, said David Sawicki, who has represented the Western States Petroleum Association on state oil spill panels.

“If we need to respond we will – but not in a knee-jerk way,” Sawicki said.

The study Manning referred to was commissioned by the state after the 2004 spill of 1,000 gallons of oil in Dalco Passage, between Tacoma and Vashon Island. That spill cost nearly $2 million to clean up, and the initial response was criticized as ineffective.

The study suggested grooming fishing vessels as a secondary fleet of oil spill response ships, similar to programs used in Alaska and British Columbia.

The study, by Seattle consulting group the Glosten Associates, was narrowly tailored to examine the use of fishing boats, said Paul Smith, Glosten project manager.

“It is an untapped resource, and that is what we were trying to put across,” he said Thursday.

Smith noted that a similar effort was launched in the 1990s but evaporated after running out of money. The system suggested by the new study would be managed by a single agency, Smith said.

The spill study said a fishing vessel assistance program could cost about $260,000 to start and about $287,000 a year to operate. Ecology Department officials said the oil industry would be a likely source of funding.