VICTORY: Public Pressure Kills Proposed North Portland Propane Terminal

by Dirk VanderHart / Portland Mercury

An enormous propane terminal was nearly allowed to sneak into St. Johns without public process. Now public process has killed it.

The prospects of a $500 million export terminal—proposed by Canadian firm Pembina Pipeline and pushed by the Port of Portland—largely died yesteday, when Mayor Charlie Hales called both the Port and Pembina to let them know he no longer supports the proposal.

This is shocking news. Hales was an early booster for the terminal, which he said would bring cash and jobs to the city. But Hales’ office says the public—the very public that, but for a smudge of zoning code, would have been largely left out of weighing in on the project—has turned too far against Pembina’s proposal.

“They lost the public opinion in Portland in such a dramatic manner,” says Dana Haynes, Hales’ chief spokesman. “The letters and phone calls and emails we get ran so far in the anti-propane direction.”

Haynes says the mayor has been considering his stance on the propane deal for weeks, and that he finally called Port director Bill Wyatt and Pembina management yesterday to let them know: “This is not going to be a winner.”

The mayor’s decision was first reported this morning by Willamette Week, which got ahold of an e-mail Wyatt sent to colleagues last night. That e-mail says Hales told Wyatt his newfound opposition lies largely in his hopes for re-election next year. Haynes stopped just short of calling that claim a lie.

“I was in the room during the conversation,” he says. “That topic did not come up.”

What happens now is unclear. Hales recommended that Pembina withdraw its pipeline proposal, but Haynes said the company asked for time to think about its next move. An inquiry to a company spokesman hasn’t been returned. Portland City Council is scheduled on June 10 to consider zoning changes that would have paved the way for the terminal. City Hall staffers were steeling themselves for a “shit show,” several told me, but now the drama’s gone. Even if the proposal’s still live at that point, such a zoning change would almost certainly fail without the mayor’s vote.

Pembina’s proposal would have meant millions in tax dollars to Portland coffers, but drew sharp criticisms over the perceived hypocrisy of green, climate change-averse Portland shipping huge amounts of fossil fuels overseas. Pembina sought to allay those fears, saying much of the propane wouldn’t be burned, just folded into plastic products. It wasn’t enough for opponents or for Hales, who found environmental arguments far more persuasive than safety concerns raised about the project.

“I have urged the company to withdraw on the grounds of environmental standards alone,” the mayor said in a statement announcing his decision. “And Portlanders’ standards place carbon emissions and climate impact as the No. 1 cause for concern.”

The shifting tide for Pembina is a huge win for the environmental and neighborhood activists who united in opposition to the project, interrupting city council proceedings with a fun bit of theatrics involving giant cardboard heads and mocking up fake re-election posters for “Fossil Fuel Charlie”. More meaningful, though, were hours of public testimony against the project at a Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission meeting in early April. That hearing wouldn’t have been necessary but for a bit of protective zoning code, that would have prohibited Pembina from piping propane over shoreline and into storage tanks on the river, to be received by ships.

The outcry at that hearing made much of the difference.

“People don’t want petroleum products shipped out of the country by way of Portland,” Haynes says. “[The mayor] wanted this to be successful. They didn’t make their case.”

Read Hales’ full release after the jump.