From the Seattle Post Intelligencer 01/05/06:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=b&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_Biodiesel_Plant.html
One interesting thing here is the location at the Port of Whitman County’s Wilma barge terminal site. There is already an established fuel depot here, wherein barges bring fuel up from the lower Columbia River deep draft terminals. However, there is no rail access at this site even though there is an industrial spur that runs through the Port site, soley because the railroad(s) didn’t want to pay the co-op membership fee.
The railroad(s) in question is the Great Northwestern Railroad (owned by WATCO) nee the Camas Prairie RailNet, nee the Camas Prairie Railroad which was half owned by both UP and BN. Both BN and UP sold their half interests to North American RailNet back in the late 1990’s, and RailNet subsequently sold the enterprise to WATCO a few years ago.
That being said, it will be interesting to see if 1) the plant will produce in excess of local demand (there’s no way the LC valley and surrounding region will consume 15 million gallons of biodiesel), meaning biodiesel may be shipped west to the I-5 metropolis and/or down to California, and 2) if so, will such out of area shipments be by barge or rail? Outside of the media release, one of the factors that brought this enterprise to the LC valley is both the access to barge petroleum facilities and the fact that the GNW railroad has competitive rate and service access to both UP and BNSF. It should be noted that this enterprise also looked at other sites but rejected them in part because of rail captivity and shortline longevity issues e.g. the prospect of WATCO ending service on the ex-BN lines on the Palouse.
Transportation factoring is becoming more and more important in such industrial plant siting decisions.
Good to see they choose a location with several transport options. In Britain it would probably have been built on a site with only road access.
Paying a co-op membership fee just to gain access to their terminal for POTENTIAL traffic sounds an awful lot like extortion (or a kickback) and would set a risky precedent.
The consensus, even among environmental groups, is that bio-diesel isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. The amount that can be produced is quite small compared to the market as a whole so it wouldn’t really put a real dent in the need for imported oil. Bio-diesel also puts more NO emissions into the air than petroleum-based diesel so it would be under similar restrictions in areas like Houston as petroleum-based diesel.
Paul,
I agree with you that biodiesel is more hype than hope.
What I’m trying to focus on here is how proposed industrial facilities, ones that ostensibly would utilize bulk commodity transportation systems, are located given today’s transportation picture. There may be a disparity regarding what mode would be the most logical method of transporting the finished product vs what mode is actually utililzed.
For example, with this Washington biodiesel facility, it is assumed that the Puget Sound metro area will be a major customer. It’s roughly 350 miles from the Wilma port site to Seattle. Logic (and my past experience in petroleum distribution in this area) says rail carload would be the best way to ship to Seattle. Yet it appears that a barge-to-Longview/truck-to-Seattle combo is being seriously considered. (Trucking the product the entire way is the most expensive option).
The reasons for this are understandable given today’s transportation picture in the PNW: (1)Shorthaul carload shipping by rail is getting harder and harder to come by, whether by BNSF or UP. (2)Barging the product back down river via fuel barge is a low cost option, since it is a backhaul. Yet it seems there is a significant cost in transloading the product from barge to truck tanker, and in trucking the 150 miles up to Seattle.
With regards to #1 above, there is ample rail capacity available from Lewiston to Puget Sound via the Stampede Pass line, and there is regular carload freight moving between those two points via Stampede Pass. So more carload freight isn’t a logistical problem for the railroad.
So why can’t the railroads get their act together and get this new traffic back on the most logical transportation mode for that particular product? Why do they willingly defer to the barge and truck lines?