Helping Portland maintain its position as the second largest oil port on the East Coast, after Philadelphia, the Portland Pipe Line Corporation is upgrading its facilities at Pier 2. Portland is the largest port in New England in terms of total through port tonnage.
Portland Pipe Line, part of the waterfront since 1941, recently added new safety equipment and widened and strengthened the pier. Dredging is planned for mid-November. Pier 2 extends out from the South Portland side of the outer harbor between Spring Point and Bug Light.
According to Ralph Wink, Director of Engineering at Portland Pipe Line, planning for the improvements began five years ago. “Permitting was a challenge and does take a lot of time,” said Wink.
Permits from both the Army Corps of Engineers, through the Federal Rivers and Harbors Act, and the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) were required.
Doug Burdick, in DEP’s Land and Water Bureau, worked through the permit process with Portland Pipe Line. He called this project typical of the maintenance and upgrade dredging that all berthing sites go through.
Chemical and biological testing of the dredge site showed that the dredged material was clean enough to be taken to the Portland disposal site about six miles offshore. (Contaminated material must be disposed at upland sites at a cost of 10 to 15 times the cost of sea disposal.)
Approximately 210,000 cubic yards are to be dredged around Pier 2. The project will create two basins 57 feet deep, one on either side of the pier. The increased depth allows vessels to be fully loaded at the pier at low tide.
Portland harbor’s channel is 45 feet deep at mean low tide. Vessels with a draft of 49 feet may now enter the harbor at high tide. With the dredge at Pier 2, loaded vessels will have a comfortable keel clearance at low tide.
Fewer, larger vessels
While Portland harbor does have one of the deepest harbors on the east coast, many modern oil tankers have a deeper draft when fully loaded. The 57-foot basins at Pier 2 will mean fewer vessels must enter “light-loaded.”
Joe Payne, the Bay Keeper for Friends of Casco Bay, pointed out that the deeper berths for larger ships, more fully loaded, should diminish the number of trips, and “that is all good for the harbor.”
Wink confirmed that in the future, fewer vessels would be bringing in oil, while the payload will increase gradually, by approximately 10 percent. Currently an average of 200 vessels a year offload at Pier 2. Turnaround time for a ship runs 30 to 36 hours.
Before improvements, vessels typically offloaded an average of 700,000 barrels. When the upgrade is complete, that capacity will be 900,000 to 950,000 barrels per ship. The pipeline itself sends 450,000 barrels a day to Montreal and Ontario.
Payne called the Portland Pipe Line Corporation “terrific corporate neighbors, clean and safe – they go out of their way to work with people.”
“Our primary focus is a safe and efficient operation,” said Wink. “Shipbuilding has clearly progressed, making more demands on our pier.”
The pier, originally built in 1956, has been widened. New pilings and concrete fenders now reinforce it. Six new unloading arms, three per side, have been installed. Fire equipment, including larger pumps and fire towers with better coverage, has also been installed as also part of the improvement project.
In mid-October, the Smart Hook System with Dock Smart arrived. The Smart Hook System, Wink said, provides more operating intelligence as vessels offload. It measures strain on the mooring lines and makes sure a vessel stays balanced as oil is pumped off. “We’ll be able to track better the strains on the vessel,” says Wink.
Dock Smart gives pilots of vessels additional information as they approach the pier for berthing. Ships using the Pipe Line range from 750 to 910 feet in length, and with the new upgrades can reach 960 feet. Radar detectors on Dock Smart continually measure the distance from dock to vessel as the vessel comes in.
By the time Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company starts digging, Chris Heinig’s crew from Marine Environmental and Resource Assessment Corporation – MER Assessment – will have gathered up the lobsters on the dredge site. Both Great Lakes and MER worked on the Portland harbor dredging of 1998-99.
Armed with a special license from the Department of Marine Resources, MER placed 120 modified lobster traps around the site in mid-October. The traps’ parlors were covered with shrimp netting, an arrangement designed to keep everything over three inches inside the trap.
Brian Tarbox, MER’s coordinator in the field, reported recovering 1,200 lobsters in the first two days. At the recommendation of Casco Bay lobstermen, MER is relocating the lobsters close to cable crossings where scallop drags are forbidden.
Tarbox is obliged to haul the traps between arriving and departing vessels. Either end of the 90-trap trawl is attached to lines weighed down, far from vessel or tug movement, so that the buoys are not disrupted.
MER found that the propellers of the tankers had carved out hollows in the mud. Here, in the nearly vertical walls of mud, lobsters are burrowing horizontally. Scientists call this “pueblo-ing.”
Wink estimates that the all the work will be completed in a couple of months.
Sandy Duncan, dean of the Portland Pilots responsible for bringing all large vessels to and from Portland Harbor, said that the Portland Pipe Line “is a very conservative outfit and we feel very happy handling [their ships]. To have then loaded more is simply more efficient.”