Cherry Point fuel facility responds to allegations of unpermitted expansion
Petrogas Energy Corp. denied allegations that it expanded its Ferndale facility without the necessary permits in an April 15 response to a request for information from Whatcom County.
The Ferndale facility is the only operating liquefied petroleum gas export terminal on the U.S. Pacific Coast, receiving propane and butane by rail, pipeline and truck and distributing the fuels nationally and internationally.
Petrogas came under scrutiny from county officials in January after an investigation by the Northwest Clean Air Agency found that there was a significant increase in the terminal’s air pollution and fuel exports since 2016. The investigation concluded that these increases were likely due to changes made to the facility without the appropriate permits and environmental reviews.
AltaGas, a Canadian company that acquired a controlling interest in Petrogas in 2020, acknowledged in its April response that the amount of fuel coming in and out of the terminal increased over the last five years but said it was not due to any facility expansion.
The company said that railroad company BNSF was able to increase the number of rail cars carrying fuel to the terminal on a daily basis, which in turn bumped up the amount of product handled there. In 2016, AltaGas said BNSF provided the facility with up to 24 rail cars per day, a number that doubled to 48 rail cars per day in 2017.
“No permits or authorizations were required for the BNSF action,” AltaGas’ response read.
One of Whatcom County’s primary concerns was that Petrogas had violated the county’s years-long ban on expansion of fossil fuel export facilities at Cherry Point. The moratorium, imposed in August 2016, ended in 2021 when the Whatcom County Council unanimously voted to permanently restrict new fossil fuel infrastructure at Cherry Point. Scientists warn that humanity needs to quickly cut the amount of fossil fuels it burns to avoid devastating levels of climate change.
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AltaGas was adamant in its response that Petrogas did not violate the moratorium. It distinguished between the facility’s “capacity,” or how much product it has the ability to handle, and its “throughput,” which is how much product it actually handles. While the facility may have increased its throughput of propane and butane over the last five years, the terminal’s capacity has not changed since 2016, AltaGas wrote.
If the county wanted to regulate the terminal’s throughput, it “would be prohibiting regular, sometimes daily, fluctuations in activity at the Facility, which seems beyond the scope of the moratoria and inconsistent with the intent to allow existing facilities to conduct routine operations,” AltaGas wrote in its response.
AltaGas said its April response was based on a “diligent document review” and discussions with employees who worked at the Ferndale facility in 2016. However, the Petrogas leadership team directly responsible for permitting at that time no longer works at the company and was not available to provide information to AltaGas.
“We value the relationships we’ve built with our regulators and we appreciate the relationship we have formed with Whatcom County since acquiring our controlling interest in the Ferndale facility,” AltaGas’ media relations team wrote in an email to The Bellingham Herald. “We are continuing to work with the regulators to ensure this issue is resolved.”
Whatcom County is currently reviewing AltaGas’ response and will work with the Northwest Clean Air Agency to determine next steps, wrote Mark Personius, director of Whatcom’s Planning and Development Services, in an email to The Herald. There is no definitive timeline on when those next steps might occur, he said.
This story was originally published April 28, 2022 at 11:28 AM.
