The Puget Sound and the political fury
Oil refinery bill roils lawmakers, ignites campaign
By Blaine Harden, Washington Post | December 4, 2005
SEATTLE -- When it comes to sacred cows in the oh-so-green state of Washington, the holiest of holies is Puget Sound, the shimmering estuary with oysters, clams, and soul-stirring views for the nearly 4 million people who live around its waters.
So when Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska introduced a bill last month that would increase oil tanker traffic in the sound, nearly every state politician -- Democrat and Republican alike -- joined hands, rushed to the legislative barricades, and howled with indignant fury.
Leaked e-mails from British Petroleum stoked their indignation. BP owns the largest oil refinery in Puget Sound. It also has been a major player in Alaska's oil industry, and a significant contributor to Stevens's political campaigns.
The e-mail messages, which BP says are genuine, show that the company has worked with Stevens this year, as well as with Republicans in the House, to open Puget Sound for more tanker traffic. One e-mail from BP spokesman Bill Kidd predicted on Oct. 19 that Stevens would soon be on the Senate floor to introduce a bill to increase refining capacity in the sound. Three weeks later, Stevens introduced his bill, saying it would ''enable us to get petroleum resources to West Coast states quickly."
In the state of Washington, no one has howled louder about Stevens's bill -- and has more to gain from voter awareness -- than Senator Maria Cantwell.
The first-term senator, a Democrat from Washington, is up for reelection next fall. She has a formidable Republican challenger and has been described by some political analysts as ''beatable."
But she has won effusive praise from local editorial writers and political veterans for standing up to the powerful senior senator from Alaska.
''This is a great issue for Maria," said Representative Norman D. Dicks, a Democrat and senior member of Washington's congressional delegation. ''The only thing more holy in this state than keeping Californians from taking water from the Columbia River is protecting Puget Sound."
Cantwell has made a none-too-subtle reference to the nation's worst oil spill, which occurred in the waters of Stevens's home state after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989. ''We learned valuable lessons when nearly 11 million gallons of oil spilled in Alaska's Prince William Sound," Cantwell said. ''We don't need to relearn them in Puget Sound."
Forced by Cantwell's headline-grabbing objections, her probable Republican opponent in next year's Senate race, Mike McGavick, met with Stevens on Nov. 15 and, as he informed reporters later, told the senator that his bill is a ''nonstarter" in the state of Washington.
Cantwell, meanwhile, has had a number of testy exchanges with Stevens, who serves as chairman of the Commerce Committee.
He angrily cut her off during a recent hearing with oil industry executives, when she insisted that they be sworn in before testifying.
It has been an exasperating autumn for Stevens. Once again, his effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling has stalled in Congress. Stevens said earlier in the year that he had seen a doctor because he was ''depressed" by his failure to open up the refuge.
In October, Stevens threatened to quit the Senate if funding were cut for two costly bridges in his home state. Derided as ''Bridges to Nowhere," the projects have become nationally known as symbols of pork-barrel spending.
In challenging Stevens, Cantwell has repeatedly invoked the sainted name (in Washington state) of the late senator Warren G. Magnuson, who in his era was as powerful -- and shameless at dishing out pork -- as Stevens is now.
In addition to Magnuson's enormous servings of legislative largess, which in the 1960s and 1970s helped make Washington one of the nation's largest per-capita recipients of federal spending, the senator delivered a unique gift to his constituents in 1977.
It came in the form of an amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The amendment imposed de facto limits on oil tanker traffic in Puget Sound by restricting the expansion of refinery terminals or docks in the sound, unless needed by consumers in the state.
After 28 years, the Magnuson amendment is strangling the ability of oil companies to supply gasoline to the growing population of the entire Pacific Northwest, according to Stevens and BP.
''Due to current restrictions," Stevens said when he introduced his bill, ''it is almost impossible for companies to expand their refineries to increase supply."
BP says oil demand on the West Coast is increasing at 2 percent a year and there is a structural shortage of gasoline and jet fuel of about 150,000 barrels of day.
Expansion of BP's Cherry Point refinery in Puget Sound -- which opened in 1971, the last oil refinery built on the West Coast -- would greatly ease this shortage, said Kidd, the BP spokesman.
Nonetheless, Cantwell appears to be pinning her reputation on stopping Stevens. In a letter to Senator Bill Frist, a Republican from Tennessee and the majority leader, she wrote: ''I will use every procedural option granted to me as a United States senator to stop this unfortunate and misguided legislation from becoming law." |
