West Coast communities foresee an end to fossil fuels. Can they make the industry pay up before it’s too late?

Oregon, Washington, and California trying to insure communities against devastating potential oil spills — and recoup damages already inflicted

In Portland, Oregon, close to the city’s downtown, the banks of the Willamette River are lined by a six-mile, 60-year-old oil tank farm that stores the vast majority of the state’s liquid fuels. It’s critical infrastructure. And it’s a massive potential hazard.

Earlier this month a study, conducted by Multnomah County and the City of Portland, found that an earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone could trigger the some 200 million gallons of fuel to pour into the Willamette — a devastating spill that would rival BP Deepwater Horizon in scale.

The report also estimated that it would cost at least $2.6 billion in damages and would likely be “many multiples of the monetized amount”.

As municipalities and states up and down the West Coast think about how to hold oil and gas companies accountable for damages that corporations have already exacted on communities and for damages that may well be around the corner, the report turned heads.

Nick Caleb, an attorney with the Oregon-based environmental group Breach Collective, said placing a number on the risks associated with the oil and gas industry can be a first step to recouping potential damages.

“At any given time, polluting industries are externalizing direct harms and future risks onto the public, and there’s various inequities,” Mr Caleb told The Independent. “But you can quantify those, and if you can quantify them, then they can serve as a basis for making policy changes or potentially lawsuits in the future.”

For different municipalities, that means varying things. Democrats in the Oregon legislature are using the new study to push forward a bill that would require energy terminal owners to submit to independent earthquake assessments by summer 2024 and pay for recommended seismic upgrades.

State legislators in Washington are pursuing similar goals this year. Currently, oil and gas companies in Washington are allowed to self-insure against the risks of spills, explosions, and leaks — essentially promising the state that they will pay for clean-up and restoration efforts should anything unforeseen happen.

The problem, historically, has been that the fossil fuel industry has failed to uphold their end of the bargain, suing in an attempt to avoid paying clean-up costs or, in a number of cases, simply declaring bankruptcy.

Over the last half-century, for instance, oil companies have spilled thousands of barrels of oil into the Salish Sea between Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia — threatening the region’s aquatic ecosystem, including salmon, shellfish, and Orca whales.

Washington State Representative Mia Gregerson’s bill would change the calculus. It would require oil and gas companies to go through a process which eliminates the self-insurance option and ensures that companies compensate their city, county, state, and any federally-recognized Indigenous tribes in the event of a spill.

That kind of insurance is all the more important right now for West Coast communities given the effects of the climate crisis.

“Transporting [oil] with all of these new climate-related disasters, whether it’s flooding, whether it’s fire, all of these things just make things more uncertain and more dangerous if we don’t adapt — and part of that adapting is [oil companies] recognizing their own responsibilities if they’re going to continue to stay in this business,” Ms Gregerson said.

Lawmakers and policy experts see holding oil and gas companies fully liable for their potential risks to the general public as a straightforward insurance policy for cities and ecosystems. They also believe that those kinds of measures could prove a significant disincentive for the fossil fuel industry to build terminals and pipelines in the first place.

“Overall, oil and gas companies have been able to build new operations with very little accountability from the beginning,” Matt Krogh, a campaign director with Stand.earth, said. “So I do think that if they were actually truly regulated and held accountable for their impacts, yeah, we would probably see a lot less effort to build new projects.”

Mr Krogh pointed to Puget Sound Energy’s new liquified natural gas facility in Tacoma, Washington as an example of why these policies are so important. Construction on the facility began several years ago despite the company lacking several necessary permits and continued despite a series of lawsuits.

They have made billions if not trillions of dollars selling a product that they knew was causing climate catastrophe.

Matt Krogh, campaign director with Stand.earth, on the fossil fuel industry

“I will not be able to tell you about the number of barrels and the amount of pounds [companies are moving]… but that’s not what keeps me up at night,” Ms Gregerson said.

“It’s the spill in the Salish Sea that is disrupting our food system and harming our animals and then the amount of clean up and the destruction around all economies when that happens.”

The clock is ticking — not only because of rising incidences of natural disasters which increase the risk of spills and explosions, but also because the oil and gas industry’s long-term financial prospects are not particularly strong.

As the US and the rest of the world move away from planet-heating fossil fuels, oil and gas giants may not have the footprint or financial resources to compensate communities for the damages they have wrought.

“Every level of government should be investing time and effort into trying to recoup costs from the oil and gas industry before it’s too late,” Mr Krogh said. “They have made billions if not trillions of dollars selling a product that they knew was causing climate catastrophe.”

This is of particular concern to activists and a segment of elected officials in Richmond, California, a majority-non-white Bay Area city that is home to a massive 2,900-acre Chevron refinery.

The presence of the refinery, which last caught fire in 2012 and landed more than 15,000 area residents in the hospital, has been linked to disproportionately high rates of diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular disease, and cancer in nearby neighborhoods. The air quality around the refinery is a constant concern.

But Chevron is also Richmond’s largest employer, and over the years, it has poured millions of dollars into local elections, made millions in charitable contributions, operated its own newspaper, and taken Contra Costa County to court to try to recoup its property taxes. Katt Ramos, managing director of the Richmond Our Power coalition, described the corporation as an “octopus”.

Now, activists and environmentalists in Richmond are preparing for the end. Few believe that the refinery, a dominant force in the city for the last century, will continue to process hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil in the decades to come. But whether the refinery transitions to producing hydrogen or closes completely, it will leave economic and environmental devastation in its wake.

“If we’re talking about the relationship between Chevron and the people, we’re talking about contention, we’re talking about despair, we’re talking about a toxic relationship — literally, figuratively, and in every sense of the world,” Ms Ramos said.

The Richmond Our Power coalition and others would like to be able to put a price tag on what Chevron has and will continue to cost the community in health and economic opportunity. The problem is that community groups and their allies have thus far been unable to do much of the research necessary to ascertain what the damage looks like.

“They won’t allow us anywhere near [the refinery] to start research,” Ms Ramos said. “So we can’t tell you what that number is until we’re given access. Those are the first steps.”

It is difficult to put a number on the cost of physical transformation of the city and the long-term health concerns for Richmond residents, including young children. But getting to a figure could help.

“The idea that we wouldn’t hold [fossil fuel companies] accountable is appalling,” Mr Krogh said. “It’s true that we have all been using that product, but it’s also true that they have been actively restricting the ability to develop alternatives — opposing transit, opposing electric vehicles, and lying about the climate impacts.”

Richmond is trying. In 2018, it followed a number of other Bay Area cities and sued Chevron and other fossil fuel companies for monetary damages related to the costs of fighting and adapting to climate change. But the long road that Richmond and other frontline cities are facing as they try to recoup costs demonstrates the importance of establishing the financial responsibilities of fossil fuel companies at the outset of their operation.

People in Richmond are now thinking about what the decommissioning process will look like when it comes — how to support workers who will need new jobs, how to heal the physical environment, and how to stretch and expand the mutual aid networks that have always been a well of resiliency in the city.

“We want us to be able to thrive,” Ms Ramos said. “We want us to live with beautiful green things around us. We want us to be healthy.”