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Effectively responding to a commercial oil spill – or preventing a spill from happening – hasn’t always been the well-honed science, technology and logistical orchestration in place today.
Long before pollution control acts of the 1990s were developed, regional oil refineries whose loads of hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil were sailing up the Delaware Bay and River thought having a plan and equipment in place just in case would be a good idea.
“It was a nascent industry when they began. They taught themselves much to become leaders in the technology and the techniques,” said Gary B. Patterson, executive director of the Delaware Petroleum Council of the Delaware River and Bay Cooperative Inc.
Patterson, at the Lewes Chamber of Commerce’s Thursday, Feb. 28, breakfast meeting at Cadbury of Lewes, introduced Capt. Eugene Johnson, president of the Delaware Bay & River Cooperative (DBRC) Inc.
Johnson a retired U.S. Coast Guard officer has been DBRC president since 1992.
The cooperative’s job is to be prepared to respond to oil spills using special vessels and equipment that can protect environmentally sensitive areas, contain spilled oil and skim oil from open waters.
“We focus on the Delaware Bay and the Delaware River. We protect sensitive areas and we have equipment to remove oil and hopefully put it into the refinery and turn it into gasoline,” said Johnson.
The cooperative, composed of seven Delaware Bay, oil refineries, is a nonprofit corporation that is fully funded by the industry it serves.
Established in 1976-78 and incorporated in 1992, the cooperative receives no federal or state government money.
Johnson said more than 1 million barrels of crude oil a day make their way up bay to refineries. (One barrel is equivalent to about 42 gallons. The Delaware Bay, Philadelphia area port is the largest crude oil import port on the East Coast.
Crude oil tankers enter Delaware’s Big Stone Anchorage where some of their cargo is partially off-loaded into barges in a process called lightering.
In lightering, as much as 300,000 to 400,000 barrels of oil are transferred from 1 million barrel capacity tankers.
Johnson said the co-operative’s primary operational territory is from the mouth of the Delaware Bay to the Betsy Ross Bridge in Philadelphia.
The co-operatives list of corporate members is a who’s who in the petroleum and energy business. Sunoco Logistics Partners, Sunoco Inc., ConocoPhillips, OSG Ship Management, Valero Refining Co. N.J., and Valero Delaware City Refinery, top the list.
Smaller but also well-known companies such as Citgo Asphalt Refining, Van Line Bunkering Inc., and Bouchard Transportation Co are also co-op members as are Conectiv, Exelon Power, PSEG Nuclear LLC and Pacific Atlantic Terminals LLC.
“DBRC has a total of 18 employees and up until 2004 my office used to be in Lewes, but we moved to Linwood, Pennsylvania, because most of our member companies are in the Philadelphia area,” Johnson said.
He said the Delriver vessel and its crew are based at the University of Delaware’s Pilottown Road marine operations facility. The four-man crew is aboard the ship around the clock, rotating one week on and one week off. Additional crewmembers are on call and must be able to get to an incident within a few hours.
Built in 1980, the 166-foot Delriver is capable of skimming more than 13,700 barrels of oil per day and is able to store more than 3,000 barrels of recovered oil.
The DBRC’s 68-foot Delbay, capable of skimming 13,700 barrels a day, is moored at Sunoco’s Marcus Hook refinery.
The DBRC’s primary business office in Linwood is also where ancillary materials, equipment and smaller boats are warehoused.
“The last time we responded in the bay was in 1995 and that was a sea chest leak. It’s been really quiet –and I’m knocking on some wood, here,” said Johnson.
In November 2004, the Delriver responded to a spill from the vessel Athos, after the ship’s hull was punctured by a submerged anchor in the Delaware River. About 265,000 gallons of crude leaked from the tanker.
“We had 55,000 feet of boom out in the water and there were no reports of any significant oil getting up into the wetlands,” said Johnson. He said along the entirety of the zone protected by the DBRC there are 137 openings into wetland areas.
“If oil gets into a wetland area we’ve pretty much lost the war. It’s very hard to clean it out and it can do significant environmental damage. On riverbanks, it’s not nice, but occasionally accidents happen. But they can be cleaned up.” Johnson said.
Contact Henry Evans at hevans@capegazette.com
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