And Now, Superports

In Augusta, Me., last week, the state legislature began considering a bill that would control industrial development of the scenic coastline to prevent environmental damage. The measure has already stirred heated controversy throughout the state, but it has drawn little attention elsewhere, although one section of the bill may have effects far beyond the shores of Maine. It bans the establishment of deepwater oil ports anywhere in the state except Portland, where the existing port is already operating at capacity.

Passage of the bill would thus close off the only stretch of the entire Gulf and Atlantic coastlines still available to supertankers. The huge ships, which can carry as much as 3,000,000 bbl. of oil, draw up to 89 ft. of water at dockside. Delaware, the only other state with harbors deep enough to handle the ships, is already off limits; in 1971, it passed a conservation law forbidding any more heavy industry--including oil-tanker facilities--on its shoreline.

Understandable as it is, the states' resistance will affect the growing energy crisis. Domestic reserves of oil are dwindling, and by 1980 the U.S. will have to import some 300 million tons of oil annually, most of it from the Middle East and Africa. The cheapest way by far of shipping oil to the U.S. is in supertankers. But where will the great ships unload their cargo?

Economic Shoals. Stymied on shore by the states, the Federal Government is looking for solutions at sea. The Nixon Administration would like private industry to build some kind of "superport" in federally controlled waters beyond the states' three-mile jurisdiction. One proposal is to construct "monobuoys," which cost about $500 million and have already been tested off the coasts of the United Kingdom, Africa and Japan. Each buoy is moored 15 to 20 miles out to sea and connected by an underwater pipeline to shoreline facilities. Supertankers simply tie up to the buoy and pump oil into the pipeline while swinging with the tides and currents. Trouble is, oil is often spilled in the process and eventually washes ashore. For this reason the Japanese, with their new-found ecological fervor, are now shifting to an alternative: "sea islands."

These are not true islands at all, but great, floating metal docks that cost at least $700 million and are anchored to the ocean floor. Prototypes already exist in the Persian Gulf, Caribbean Sea and off the British Isles. Tugs nudge the supertankers into berths where they unload. So little spillage occurs during this procedure that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is urging that sea islands or equivalents be built at several points off the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

Texas and Louisiana are actively supporting the scheme. But along the Eastern Seaboard, there is strong resistance to the plan. In New Jersey, the state's two Senators angrily oppose the superport projects, and Governor William T. Cahill bluntly calls them "unacceptable." At congressional hearings on the subject last week, Delaware's Senator Joseph R. Biden warned that if just one tanker splits apart, the oil spill "probably would swallow up my whole state."

Corps of Engineers officials nonetheless feel that new techniques can be developed for preventing oil spills and for mopping them up quickly if they occur. But until such methods are proven to the satisfaction of a conservation-minded citizenry, the growing fleet of supertankers may well have to put in at existing deepwater ports in the Caribbean and Canada, where they can shift their oil to smaller tankers for entry into U.S. ports. That, too, is an expensive process. Thus, no matter which option is finally chosen, the cost of environmental protection will soon be reflected in higher prices for oil.

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