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Alyeska makes offer to unhappy fishermen Boat owners involved in oil spill response program threaten to strike due to inadequate pay; oil shipments potentially jeopardized Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. is offering higher pay and other concessions to hundreds of commercial fishermen needed to respond to oil spills.
The offer comes after many fishermen signaled they were ready to go on strike to achieve their demands.
At press time, fishermen in various Southcentral Alaska ports, including the key port of Cordova, were still weighing Alyeska’s proposal.
One fisherman, who said he was not allowed to comment publicly under terms of the new Alyeska contract, predicted most fishermen would accept the increased pay rates and other benefits the company was offering.
The fishermen are individual contractors, but they organized to take on Alyeska, the oil company consortium that runs the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and tanker dock at Valdez. Alyeska’s owners include BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Koch Industries.
“Honestly, they feared we were going to strike,” the fisherman told Petroleum News. “It was a power play.”
The consequences of such a strike could be serious for Alyeska and the North Slope oil producers. Conceivably, regulators could halt oil shipments pending an agreement between Alyeska and the fishing fleet, one oil industry watchdog said.
‘Unbridled arrogance’ State and federal authorities require Alyeska to maintain a large fleet of fishing vessels to help clean up oil spills. The vessel crews take part in periodic training on such tasks as deploying boom and skimming oil off the surface of the water.
Fishing vessels played a crucial role in responding to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.
The roughly 350 boats come from Cordova, the main fishing port in Prince William Sound, plus the downstream ports of Valdez, Whittier, Seward, Homer and Kodiak.
Fishermen contend Alyeska has neglected them for years with inadequate pay, insurance and respect.
Earlier this year, Alyeska implemented a 10 percent pay increase across the fleet and admitted to regulators it had fallen short of the required number of ready boats.
Since then, pressure on the company has escalated with fishermen organizing the fleet and making written demands.
Beginning in late March, dozens of fishing vessel owners and captains signed letter of intent warning Alyeska they were prepared to skip annual training sessions and drop out of the response program barring negotiations and a compensation agreement by May 1.
On March 30, representatives for fishermen in Cordova, where many of the best trained and fastest responding boats are located, told Alyeska President Kevin Hostler that 80 vessels “will become unavailable, stand down, or otherwise quit the program if there is not an acceptable contract in place prior to the spring drills in Cordova.” Those drills begin April 29.
On April 12, fleet leaders told Cordova fishermen in a memo that Alyeska wasn’t responding to their proposal.
“Alyeska is taking their time on this one which is fine because we have all the time in the world,” the memo said. “Alyeska’s unbridled arrogance and utter contempt for the fishing vessel oil response program is coming through loud and clear. The company must be shocked that after almost 20 years of participation in the program vessel owners are actually standing up for themselves. …”
Alyeska’s offer On April 19, Alyeska put out a press release saying it had “issued a compensation adjustment” to the fishermen. The company also said it had “committed to reviewing compensation on a three-year cycle.”
The press release said nothing about any potential strike, but mentioned Alyeska “has workboats to augment the fishing vessel fleet” on spill response.
“We recognized that adjustments were needed to keep up with the rising costs these operators face,” said Kathy Zinn, Alyeska’s senior director of Valdez operations. “We worked to find the best solution and to address the concerns raised by the fleet.”
The Alyeska press release said the company reviewed data from the fishermen and researched harbor fees and other costs. Alyeska representatives plan to host meetings in the six fishing ports in May to talk about the company’s 2010 compensation package.
“The final compensation provisions are comparable to the Northwest market,” Zinn said. “We hope these new provisions and a commitment to better communication strengthen the program.”
Fishermen in Cordova planned to meet the evening of April 22 to vote on Alyeska’s offer.
Regardless of the outcome, the newly organized fishermen clearly have achieved substantial gains from Alyeska, according to the compensation summary.
For example, the owner and crew of a typical large fishing vessel in the Tier I category — the core group of boats that receive the most training and are obliged to respond quickest to spills — can receive compensation of $26,530 for 2010, a 50 percent increase from the 2009 level.
Other boats in the less demanding Tier II category are in line for up to a 100 percent increase in compensation under the Alyeska proposal.
Closing the deal Some sticking points remain, a fleet representative told Petroleum News. For instance, the Alyeska offer doesn’t adjust for inflation.
But generally it’s “a pretty decent proposal,” he said.
A congressionally sanctioned oil industry watchdog organization, the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council, has been closely following the rift between Alyeska and the fishing fleet.
“The fishing vessels in and around Prince William Sound are a very critical component of spill response,” said Mark Swanson, the council’s executive director.
Swanson, formerly the U.S. Coast Guard commander at Valdez, said the fishing vessel responders are a big part of required industry “contingency plans” for responding to an oil spill.
Under a strict reading of the rules, oil shipments could be curtailed if Alyeska didn’t have adequate boats to meet its obligations, Swanson said. The fishing boats, he said, are “basically part of the license for doing business.”
What the council would hate to see is regulators, including the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, making “accommodations” for Alyeska if numerous fishermen were to drop out of the response program, Swanson said.
“But I don’t think we’re headed that way,” he told Petroleum News on April 21. “The offer on the table seems to be acceptable to a large component of the fleet.”
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