Backers Hope Oil Plan Floats

An impact report is due this month on a firm’s proposed supertanker dock at Terminal Island.

With Californians slurping more and more fuel, a milestone looms for a controversial drive to build an oil supertanker dock in Los Angeles harbor.

A Long Beach energy company is poised to release an environmental assessment of what would be the West Coast’s first terminal for fully loaded oil supertankers, capable of handling a vessel large enough to serve as a shipping crate for the West’s tallest skyscraper.

To supporters, the Pacific Energy Partners plan would fill a crucial need in a state that is expected to add 7 million sport utility vehicles and light trucks and 2 million cars by 2025. During the same period, the flow of oil from Alaskan and Californian fields will shrink.

But to detractors, the project is an environmental and safety nightmare. The tankers, they say, will add to the pollution produced by the nation’s largest port, which is already the region’s largest single source of diesel exhaust emissions.

LA Times