Updates
Supply Chain and Rail Experts Weigh in on the PCIP Plans
The Coos County League of Women Voters organization recently held a public meeting focusing on how container shipping and rail transport operate on the west coast. The program included panel members with decades of experience in the container shipping industry, supply chain economics, and railroad engineering and operations. A recording of the presentation, along with biographical info on each speaker, is available in three parts on the League’s YouTube channel.
An article in the local Coos Bay newspaper, The World, summarizes the information presented.
The Millersburg and Nyssa Truck to Rail Terminals Fiasco – Is this the fate of the PCIP?
Two intermodal terminals were built in Oregon to move goods to Seattle and Tacoma ports by rail to get trucks off the highway. The Millersburg terminal was built to send hay and grass seed and the Nyssa terminal built to send onions.
Experts warned that the projects would fail but despite this the Oregon Legislature allocated more than $70M to the projects.
Neither has ever been used.
The Nyssa project, costing $37M of public money, was recently sold for $10M.
West Coast Port Expansions
Port of Los Angeles – Expansion plans and pollution reduction
The Port of Los Angeles plans to build a new container terminal to meet global supply chain demands. The plans call for a 200-acre site with two berths and 3,000 linear feet of wharf. In 2024, the Port achieved record emissions reductions, despite a 19 per cent year-on-year increase in container throughput.
Port of Long Beach – Expansion Plans
The Port of Long Beach has broken ground on a $365 million terminal expansion project to build a 3,400ft wharf that will allow two of the industry’s largest cargo ships to dock.
The Pacific Coast Intermodal Port Ship Calls and TEU (20 ft containers) Numbers Don’t Add Up
The Port of Oakland, which regularly handles 2 million TEUs/year, has 4 container terminals and 21 berths for ships. It has handled 1.72 million TEUs this year so far. For this volume 82 ships called on the Port in September with an average of 2,193 TEUs/ship for a total of 178,942 TEUs for the month. The 2-berth PCIP project is designed to handle 13 ships/month with a throughput of 167,000 TEUs/month (2 million/year). This would mean that every 13,000 TEU container ship that arrived in Coos Bay would have to unload half of its containers and reload a similar amount. This is not how container shipping companies work, they visit several ports unloading and loading at each one.
The Fallacy of a Green Port
The PCIP is promoted as a “green port” with claims of reducing truck traffic and plugging container ships into electric outlets whilst in port. There is nothing green about the container shipping industry.
Depending on how fast it travels each 13,000 TEU container ship uses roughly 70 to over 125 tonnes of fuel per day during the 12 – 16 sailing across the Pacific. The international shipping industry is responsible for ~3% of global CO2 emissions. Container ships contribute about 30% of these emissions.
Heavy fuel oil has been the main fuel source for container ships because it is inexpensive and energy-dense. However, its high sulfur content is a major source of pollution. While it is still a common fuel, the shipping industry is transitioning to cleaner alternatives like very-low-sulfur fuel and other green fuels to meet new global standards and reduce their environmental impact.
Several other harmful air pollutants are emitted by ships, including sulfur dioxide, black carbon, and nitrogen dioxide. Although many ships are fitted with “scrubbers” to reduce these pollutants the wash-water used to clean the scrubbers is often dumped overboard into the marine environment.
While in port container ships need a power source. Most container ships use a diesel generator to provide this power. Some ports are moving to supply cold ironing, meaning that ships can use a shore side electrical source. Cold ironing is slowly being implemented in west coast ports. However, a limited number of container ships are equipped to take advantage of this pollution reduction option. Only 40 of the over 900 container ships owned by the Mediterranean Shipping Company can be charged with shore electricity. California has legislation that at least half of all the container vessels coming to its ports must use shore-side power while berthed. Ships that do not have the ability to cold iron use alternative technologies, such as barge-based emissions capture systems. These attach to a docked vessel’s exhaust stack and pipe the emissions to the barge, where purification technology removes pollutants before they are released into the atmosphere.
The Port of Portland – Oregon’s Container Terminal Port
Container Shipping Terminal 6 at the Port of Portland is getting a new lease of life. Harbor Industrial has
leased the 202-acre site. The 2025 legislative session awarded $20 million for capital improvements at
the terminal. Terminal 6 has an eight track, on-dock intermodal yard that connects to the Union Pacific
Railway. Currently the SM line and the Mediterranean Shipping Company call at Portland. An average
$2.6 billion in imports and an average $500 million in exports passed through T6 in 2024. NH-Hay, a
South Korean owned Albany-based company that specializes in hay and straw, shipped 90,000 metric
tons through Terminal 6 last year, much of it going to Korea and Japan.
