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Friday, March 25, 2005
How tanker might have caused spill in Dalco Passage
But pumpman tells grand jury the oil couldn't have come from Polar Texas
The Polar Texas seemed like the perfect crime suspect -- on its last legs, with a checkered past, lacking an alibi and keeping a low profile.
On top of that, the authorities allege it left fingerprints at the scene.
Did the aged tanker cause a mystery 1,500-gallon oil spill in Puget Sound's Dalco Passage on Oct. 13? Absolutely not, says its owner, ConocoPhillips. But the Coast Guard says crude oil from the ship matched the oil spilled.
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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer got an inside look at the bitter legal battle being waged between ConocoPhillips and the Justice Department -- and a new theory that could explain how the Polar Texas might have spilled the oil without realizing it.
Last month, a candid message to ship's officers from their union -- apparently approved by company lawyers -- gave a frank description of events in the federal investigation and the company response.
"The government has called a couple of people to testify before the grand jury later this month. They are both unlicensed (non-officers) and were involved in the ballasting operations that were going on when the ship was leaving port," the message said.
According to two former Polar Texas officers -- a chief engineer and a chief mate -- and a former fleet president who knows the ship well, the Polar Texas could have spilled the oil in Dalco Passage without knowing, if a foul-weather ballasting operation -- taking in water to keep the ship's profile low and make it more stable in high seas -- was done incorrectly.
Attorneys representing the Polar Texas officers and crew told the P-I the ship took on extra ballast that day but no mistakes were made.
Chief Mate Christopher Laired of Corpus Christi, Texas, conducted what is called "dirty ballast operation," but he did it right: turning on the pump first, checking for suction and opening the "skin valve" to bring in seawater through the sea chest, said Robert Mahler, a Seattle attorney hired by the company to represent ship's officers, including Laired. The sea chest is an opening in the hull through which ballast water is drawn.
Doing it the opposite way could disgorge oil.
Veteran pumpman Randall Friend of Lewes, Del., was in a control room upstairs, watching the whole operation, and confirmed that it was done right, said Laurence Finegold, an attorney for the unlicensed, or lower ranked, crew members.
"If that oil came off of that ship, I don't know anybody who has any idea of how it happened," said Mahler. "It's a mystery."
Mahler said a diver inspected the Polar Texas sea chest in early November and it was "clean as a whistle." Other experts said the sea chest could have been naturally scoured clean by the ocean and by additional ballasting after the spill, which wasn't discovered until Oct. 14.
Finegold said Friend has been interviewed three times, including once without an attorney on the ship, and he has been completely cooperative. Mahler said his client, too, has been fully forthcoming.
Finegold said "half a dozen or more" crewmen have been called to testify before the grand jury.
On Nov.16, Friend and Laired visited the Polar Texas in Anacortes, where they sequentially took investigators through every step they performed, and both lawyers said the investigators seemed impressed.
On March 17, Friend appeared before a federal grand jury in Seattle and answered questions for about 45 minutes, Finegold said. Laired has not testified before the grand jury.
"Everybody is stumped," said Mahler. "None of my clients believes it could have come from the ship. They have no idea how it got there."
The union memo went on to describe the company feelings about the federal investigation:
"Management feels the government is just trying to apply more pressure to the witnesses and the company in an attempt to get someone to say something inconsistent with what they've said before, or get someone to refuse to say anything," the message warned. "In either case, it would help the governments (sic) attempt to discredit the individuals and the company."
It even told officers how to act before the grand jury: "...The legal department encourages everyone to think about what they've said to date, stay consistent with what they've said and try not to get intimidated. So far the company is very pleased with the way our members have handled themselves and hope they will continue to be open and honest should they be called to testify in the future."
Most Polar Tankers crew members were unwilling to talk to the P-I about the Polar Texas, but some backed up the company's insistence that it knows nothing of the cause of the spill that stained 20 miles of beaches and exposed major weaknesses in the state of Washington's spill response abilities.
"I believe very strongly that we have nothing to do with that (spill)," said Michael Shartel, 29, of El Cajon, Calif., who was a third mate on the Polar Texas when the spill occurred.
"From the beginning, ConocoPhillips has cooperated fully and will continue to cooperate fully with the government's investigation," wrote ConocoPhillips spokesman Rich Johnson in an e-mail. "We are continuing to conduct our own investigation. We do not believe we are the responsible party based on all the information we have to date."
He noted that ConocoPhillips has sued the government for its test data.
"ConocoPhillips has repeatedly assured the investigators that if they shared their information and if it shows we are the responsible party, we will do the right thing," he wrote.
A former chief engineer of the Polar Texas said the ballasting operation could be botched without the crew realizing it. Jerry Aspland, former president of the Polar Texas' fleet when it was called Arco Marine, agreed. What they described is what most experts view as the likeliest -- perhaps only -- way crude oil could have left the ship at the time it sailed through Dalco Passage.
The 91,000-ton tanker had offloaded crude oil at the U.S. Oil refinery in Tacoma and was facing bad weather on the return trip to Valdez through the North Pacific: 10-foot swells and 30-mph winds, perhaps worse, according to weather records from the time. It needed extra ballast water to lower the ship in the water and better stabilize its 899-foot hull.
The Polar Texas was equipped with clean tanks for handling most ballast water, running down the keel centerline, on the bottom of the ship. Those kind of tanks never cause pollution because they never see oil. But the ship needed more ballast for the stormy seas ahead. And taking on extra ballast required pulling it into cargo tanks through dirty pipes.
As it sailed through Dalco Passage just before sunset, around 6 p.m., its offloading pipes were contaminated with sticky crude oil. A spill later identified by the Coast Guard as crude oil would be discovered by a tug captain in Dalco Passage more than six hours later.
The crew was probably around Dalco Passage when the ship took on ballast water in cargo tanks. The experts say operators could blunder by opening the sea chest before starting the pump to pull in ballast water. Starting the pump first creates negative suction on the interior pipes caked with crude oil, preventing the muck from escaping to the environment. Doing it wrong would allow crude oil to flow down the pipe and out to sea. It is possible to do so without knowing it, and it can happen quickly.
"That could easily happen," Aspland, now a maritime consultant, said. Neither Aspland nor the former chief engineer could be contacted after the P-I was informed of Laired and Friend's testimony.
There were two captains on the ship when it left Tacoma, Eric Cooper of Homer, Alaska, and William Rich of Port Townsend. Cooper was about to attend a company meeting, and Rich, normally a chief engineer, was preparing to replace him.
Neither officer was willing to comment. It would have been their job -- along with other deck officers -- to be sure the water was checked for spills during the operation.
At the time of the spill, the Polar Texas was just two months from mandatory retirement and the scrap yard. It was an old ship, powered by a cavernous steam engine. Its hull had suffered many cracks during its long career delivering oil between Valdez and Washington and California.
The ship is now in Bangladesh, where it is being dismantled under a law passed by Congress in 1990 mandating that single-hulled or double-bottomed ships must retire after they reach a certain age. The Polar Texas was 31 years old.
The long, black vessel started its life as a Chevron ship, which exploded when it was struck by lightning in 1979 in the Houston Ship Channel. The rear end was the only salvageable part, so Arco rebuilt it with a new front end. Though larger, it was constructed to squeeze through the Panama Canal, Aspland said, and at one time he recalls it was the largest tanker to ever do so. It looked odd on the water, like its nose was too long, and it didn't have a very high bow structure, or forecastle, so it appeared incomplete.
"It was a good ship," said Aspland, 65, of Fountain Valley, Calif. "We used to laugh. Here's this thing with a new forebody on it -- and it just keeps going."
ConocoPhillips has hired four attorneys to separately represent the corporation, its officers and its seamen in the grand jury investigations and whatever else follows. No one has been charged in the Dalco Passage spill, though the Coast Guard publicly announced its laboratory findings. Justice Department officials, and investigators with the Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Ecology, declined to comment or give details of their investigation.
However, Gregory Linsin, special litigation counsel for the EPA's environmental crimes section, wrote an article, published early this week, which describes the government's approaches to environmental crimes on ships, and to the corporate response. He provided an advance copy of his article to the P-I without comment.
"One of the more persistent myths regarding criminal vessel pollution enforcement in the United States concerns the renegade prosecutor who casually files criminal charges against vessel owners or operators -- and possibly senior shipboard officers as well -- with the effect of criminalizing innocent or, at worst, inadvertent behavior," said the article in the Proceedings of the Marine Safety and Security Council, the Coast Guard Journal of Safety at Sea.
"The purveyors of this myth either do not understand or simply choose to ignore the careful analysis and complex review processes to which the charging decisions in vessel pollution cases are routinely subjected."
Linsin went on to describe factors the Justice Department considers when deciding whether to prosecute. They included "the corporation's advancement of attorney's fees, its retention of culpable employees without sanction for their misconduct, and its provision of information to culpable employees about the nature of the government's investigation pursuant to a joint defense agreement."
Another factor was "whether the subject made a voluntary, timely and complete disclosure of the matter under investigation, with particular attention to whether the disclosure occurred before regulatory or law enforcement officials had already obtained knowledge of the non-compliance."
Other factors include "the pervasiveness of the non-compliance, the existence and use of effective internal disciplinary procedures, and the extent of any effort to remedy any ongoing non-compliance."
"In the context of vessel pollution investigation, this guidance requires the prosecutor to look beyond the wrongful conduct that may have occurred aboard a specific vessel and consider the actions or the inaction of the shore-side management of the company with respect to the conduct in question," he wrote.
ConocoPhillips fleet general manager Antonio Valdes would not agree to talk when contacted at home, though he said one thing about the Polar Texas case: "We are in a very tricky situation here."
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TROUBLED TANKER
The Polar Texas was born in the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard at Sparrows Point, Md. She had a volatile adolescence -- six years later she exploded, then was rebuilt and spent the rest of her life hauling oil through the crankiest seas in the world.
During her life, in addition to exploding, she managed to spill more than 631,000 gallons, go aground twice, go adrift twice, and crack in heavy seas. But she delivered billions of gallons over the Gulf of Alaska without incident.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of U.S.-flagged vessel number 549197, from fiery beginning to an end clouded by suspicion.
Early life as Chevron Hawaii
June 1973: The Chevron Hawaii is launched, weighing 70,000 deadweight tons. Chevron takes out a $16,516,430 mortgage against it.July 1973: Trans Alaska Pipeline project is approved on tie-breaking vote by Vice President Spiro Agnew.
October 1974: Thirty-two tankers are listed as suitable to carry oil from the proposed Alaska pipeline to the lower 48, including Chevron Hawaii.
April 1977: Tankers start sailing from Valdez, Alaska. Route is known as the TAPS Trade (for Trans Alaska Pipeline).
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 | Houston Chronicle | |
| In September 1979, the Chevron Hawaii exploded in the Houston Ship Channel. The ship was rebuilt as the Arco Texas. | ||
September 1979: Lightning detonates the Chevron Hawaii at a refinery dock in Deer Park, Texas. Explosion kills three, destroys the hull, spills 630,000 gallons of crude oil, detonates four nearby oil barges and ignites an alcohol storage tank on the deck. Nothing of the Chevron Hawaii is left worth salvaging but the engine room and house.
January 1980: Charred carcass is sold to Fred Devine Diving and Salvage Inc., and then to Finn Moller.
Working life as Arco Texas
March 1980: Arco Marine based in Long Beach, Calif., buys the ship, after four months of shifting ownership.
November 1981: Name changes to Arco Texas. Ship is rebuilt at Newport News Shipyard & Drydock Facility in Newport News, Va., as a single-sided tanker with partial double bottom. The forebody is longer; weight is now 91,000 deadweight tons. Arco Marine President Jerry Aspland says it was sized to "squeeze through the Panama Canal."
August 1987: Goes aground in Miraflores Locks at the Panama Canal; no damage or spill reported.
June 1991: Runs aground while loaded at Ediz Hook in Port Angeles. No oil spilled.
March 1992: Tug, pushing on the ship too hard, dents hull slightly.
December 1992: Mist from deck vent riser spills a gallon. It is a frequent problem with old-style risers.
December 1992: Five fractures are found on either side of the hull, ranging from 3 inches to 21 inches long. Cracking is constant with tankers being battered by huge waves in the Gulf of Alaska. Coast Guard reports in those days simply say "vessel in TAPS service" to explain the cause.
June 1993: Pinhole leaks are found in welds due to "stress of normal operations."
July 1993: Spills 19 gallons on deck and one gallon in the water at Valdez terminal, after tank burps contents under pressure.
August 1993: Crack is found in ballast tank.
August 1993: Mystery sheen is discovered near ship by captain, but a diver finds only a light sheen in an air pocket under hull.
January 1994: Five-inch crack is found on deck where work had been done.
March 1994: Two-and-a-half-inch crack is found in tank weld, in area not previously prone to cracking.
March 1994: Mystery sheen is spotted by chief mate within ship's containment boom in Valdez, coming from air bubbles generated by the discharge of ballast water. Diver finds a drydock plug in a cargo tank leaking oil.
June 1994: Eight-inch fracture is found between cargo tank and ballast tank.
December 1994: Two-inch crack on main deck discovered by crewman.
March 1995: Two-inch crack on main deck, caused by faulty workmanship.
April 1995: Crewman walking deck finds eight-inch fracture in center cargo tank.
November 1995: Loses port side anchor when huge link corroded and broke, setting tanker briefly adrift in Samish Bay in 30-mph winds. Starboard anchor held.
May 1996: Arco Texas hits wall of lock in the Panama Canal with its bow because a local ship pilot was fatigued after working 30 hours in a 48-hour period and misjudges his turn. Pilot refuses to take a drug test, according to Coast Guard. Ship is repaired in drydock.
Rumors and preparations
April 1999: Arco Texas officers and others learn that there is a proposed merger between Arco and BP. Could mean shakeup in the fleet. "It was emotionally devastating," wrote officers' union leader Mike McDonnell.
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| Houston Chronicle | |
| The Polar Texas' reconstruction made it an unusual-looking but sturdy tanker. | ||
June 1999: Arco Texas spills 1,092 gallons of crude oil into the sea at the Ferndale refinery dock, and 546 gallons on deck. The ship reports it broke mooring lines while off loading oil at the Ferndale refinery, but Coast Guard e-mail indicates skepticism: "Within 10 minutes we overheard the Arco Texas directing the tugs Brian S And Arthur Foss where to push him to stabilize the situation. Notifications were made and the wind was ascertained. It was felt there may be a pollution problem since 15-knot winds are incapable of parting such large hawsers (mooring lines)."
December 1999: Merger talks between Arco and BP heat up. Arco Texas crew is uncertain about its fate. Many worry about the loss of the Arco fleet, which they feel is a great place to work, union memos show.
Phillips takes over
April 2000: Phillips Petroleum takes over Arco fleet, as part of a consent order by Federal Trade Commission. Arco merges with BP, but the British company cannot absorb Arco's Alaska assets and the tanker fleet, because of laws mandating U.S. ownership.
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| P-I | |
| A Polar Tankers calendar featured this picture of the Polar Texas. | ||
April 2000: Arco Texas gets a new name -- the Polar Texas -- and a new owner, Polar Tankers. Polar Tankers' bear logo is painted on its smokestack.
November 2001: Conoco and Phillips announce merger plans. McDonnell tells membership: "...we need to continue separating ourselves from others in the industry. Our superior operational performance and professionalism has accomplished that goal up to now. Dock personnel and regulators would rather work with Polar Tankers than any other shipping company in the TAPS Trade."
January 2002: Sea marshals first board ship to check security provisions post-9/11.
June 2002: Crew said to be happy with Phillips Petroleum fleet leadership. "I can sit down with anyone in staffing, operation and engineering and provide input that will be listened to," writes McDonnell.
June 2002: Winches fail while tanker is off-loading at Ferndale refinery. Loading pipes damaged as ship rotates away from the pier.
ConocoPhillips takes over
August 2002: Federal Trade Commission OKs Conoco and Phillips merger.
October 2003: Sea marshals find Polar Texas does not have locking engine control room or bridge, as required, "or security program in place."
July 2004: Crew of the Polar Texas -- and crews on other ships -- are infuriated by staff shortages, maintenance problems, whistle-blower reports and what they see as lack of interest from ConocoPhillips leadership in Houston. Fleet general manager Antonio Valdes is angry at officers and crew members about covered-up spill on Polar Discovery and spill and collision on Polar Endeavour. Valdes tells union leaders the crews aren't reporting near misses and other problems. Crew members say in union memos they felt the real problem is Valdes.
The final weeks
Sept. 1, 2004: Gallup survey is begun among crew of Polar Texas -- and crews of the Polar Discovery, Polar Endeavour and people at Long Beach Office -- to gauge morale. Also, last routine Coast Guard inspection aboard Polar Texas concludes, "Vessel is deemed fit for service and route intended."
Sept. 30, 2004: Survey is complete. Confidential summary published later says: "Many former ARCO employees share the belief that ARCO was in the forefront of the industry, pushing them (and supporting them) to be the best. When people say they miss ARCO, what they describe is feeling important and respected. They miss the high degree of autonomy they enjoyed working for a company that understood them, valued them, and cared about them. They do not feel this way about ConocoPhillips."
Oct. 13, 2004, late afternoon: Polar Texas sails from refinery dock at U.S. Oil in Tacoma through Dalco Passage, taking on extra ballast water in its cargo tanks because of rough weather ahead. Down below, Chief Mate Christopher Laired starts the pumps and opensthe sea chest -- in the proper order, he says -- while pumpman Randall Friend monitors the gauges upstairs. No one on board sees any spill.
Oct. 14, 2004, around 1 a.m.: Tug captain sees sheen of oil in Dalco Passage and sounds alarm. After foggy night, state officials fail to start cleanup until well past daylight.
Nov. 5, 2004: Coast Guard investigators board Polar Texas in Ferndale. A diver checks the sea chest, finding it "clean as a whistle," said lawyer representing officers.
Nov. 16, 2004: Pumpman Friend and Chief Mate Laired visit Polar Texas with investigators and demonstrate ballasting operation.
Dec. 9, 2004: Polar Texas is sold for scrap to Snow-Drop Co. Ltd., a British Virgin Islands Co. As a last insult, the U.S. flag is removed from the Polar Texas and replaced with a British Virgin Islands flag for its last trip. It makes its last journey via Singapore to Bangladesh, where -- in the vernacular of shipping -- "she'll be cut into razor blades."
Dec. 23, 2004: Coast Guard announces that a laboratory has matched oil from the spill to the cargo of the Polar Texas.
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PART ONE
Safety rules and reforms are being circumvented.
- A fraying safety net
- A cover-up?
- A strange study
PART TWO
Port Angeles is a loophole in the effort to crack down on alcohol use in the West Coast tanker trade.
- Drinking games
- Getting caught
PART THREE
A near-miss oil spill in the San Juans is just one incident that shows how even the safest high-tech ships can break down.
- A close call
- Fallible humans
PART FOUR
Experts talk about what might have happened in the Dalco Passage oil spill.
- A new theory
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