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Cook Inlet ship traffic to stay ‘flat’ New study summarizes oil tanker voyages, other shipping activity in 2010; gas line and mining projects could generate big increase Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
Shipping traffic in Alaska’s Cook Inlet is expected to remain flat or grow only moderately through the year 2020, but a few possible scenarios could cause “dramatic increases,” a new study says.
The scenarios include major coal exports, and construction of a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline. These projects have long been envisioned, but haven’t yet materialized.
The Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council released the study on Feb. 7. The Kenai-based organization, formed after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, has a congressional mandate to monitor oil tankers and terminals in Cook Inlet.
Cape International Inc. of Juneau produced the study.
The big picture It’s apparent from the study that shipping in the icy, turbulent inlet is light compared to water bodies such as Puget Sound or San Francisco Bay.
The study tallied 480 ship port calls or transits during 2010, with 15 ships accounting for 80 percent of them. These ships regularly called at Homer, Nikiski or Anchorage, the state’s largest city.
The 15 ships included:
• Five oil tankers — the Overseas Boston, the Overseas Martinez, the Overseas Nikiski, the Seabulk Pride and the Seabulk Arctic — operating between the Drift River oil terminal on the west side of Cook Inlet and the Nikiski community on the east side, home to the Tesoro refinery and other industrial facilities.
• One liquefied natural gas tanker, the Polar Spirit, which called 12 times at the ConocoPhillips LNG plant at Nikiski. The export facility is now largely inactive.
• Six cargo ships operated by Horizon Lines and Totem Ocean Trailer Express. In 2010, the two companies each sent two ships per week to the Port of Anchorage.
• Two state ferries, the Tustumena and the Kennicott, servicing Homer and nearby Seldovia.
• One large cruise ship, Holland America’s Amsterdam, which visited Anchorage and Homer.
The study counted only larger vessels over 300 gross tons.
New oil pipeline? The vessel traffic study is part of a Cook Inlet risk assessment project.
Cook Inlet is a dynamic waterway extending off the North Pacific. It’s about 150 miles long and 10 to 80 miles wide. It has some of the world’s largest tidal fluctuations and can be ice-choked in winter.
“The combination of severe weather, strong tides, and seasonal ice conditions make Cook Inlet a challenging operating environment for all types of vessels,” the study says.
The study breaks down the inlet into three units: Upper Cook Inlet, which includes Anchorage; Middle Cook Inlet, where oil tankers operate between the Drift River oil terminal and Nikiski; and Lower Cook Inlet, which takes in Homer and busy Kachemak Bay.
Oil tankers made 83 voyages to Cook Inlet in 2010 in support of the terminal operations at Drift River and Nikiski, the study says.
The tankers carried 5.2 million barrels of “persistent oil,” such as crude and residual oil that create lasting problems if spilled, and 211,000 barrels of non-persistent oil, such as gasoline and other refined products, to or from the Drift River and Nikiski terminals. Another 2.1 million barrels of refined product was loaded onto barges.
Crude is piped from west Cook Inlet oil fields to the Drift River terminal, and goes aboard tankers via the offshore Christy Lee loading platform.
From there, the tankers usually deliver the crude 23 nautical miles across Cook Inlet for refining at Nikiski.
The study suggests these trans-inlet tanker runs might be ending.
“Oil production facility operators are considering the feasibility of a cross Inlet pipeline, which would eliminate the tank ship traffic from the Drift River terminal to Nikiski,” it says.
Looking out to 2020, the study says, “it is reasonable to forecast that vessel traffic remains flat or shows moderate increases” due to population growth and improvement in the economy.
But some “unlikely” scenarios could change the outlook, the study says.
For example, the proposed Chuitna coal project on the west side of Cook Inlet could mean up to 160 ship calls to haul average annual coal production of 12 million tons.
Alaska gas pipeline construction could mean 25 to 50 cargo ship calls to Anchorage or Port MacKenzie, the study adds, and major gas discoveries in Cook Inlet could restart exports from the Nikiski LNG plant.
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