PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A fire at the Motiva Enterprises LLC petroleum terminal on the Providence River in Rhode Island has been extinguished, after leaking gasoline being offloaded from a tanker at the terminal pier exploded in a fireball on Tuesday and the blaze threatened part of the harbor, reported The Providence Journal.
The terminal, which supplies Shell-branded gasoline, jet fuel and heating oil to the region, was closed for safety's sake after the blaze. As a result, gasoline deliveries were reported to have been delayed to a network of southeastern [image-nocss] New England retailers served by the terminal, and some retailers ran out of some grades of gasoline, said the newspaper.
Motiva spokesperson Brian Delaney told the paper that there has been no discussion of reopening the terminal so that the five to six days' supply of gasoline stored there could be released to delivery trucks.
He told CSP Daily News that while he would neither confirm nor deny reports citing unnamed fuel wholesalers who said that the terminal could be closed for up to six months and could disrupt fuel supplies well into the coming winter, he called those reports pure speculation.
No one has gone out onto the docks to inspect the damage. It has not been allowed, he said. Before that inspection is done, any talk about how long the terminal will be down is premature and not based on all the information required to make such a determination. What you're hearing about six, nine months, a yeardon't believe it, said Delaney. This is not an official denial, but that's total speculation.
He added, This pier has two sides to it, the south pier and the north pier. The south pier is the tanker pier, and that's where the fire was. The north pier is the barge pier, and there was no fire on the north side, so I think you will be hearing something about the reopening of the south pier that will surprise everybody.
He said further statements about the fire's impact on gasoline supply would be forthcoming, perhaps as early as today.
An investigation into the cause of the fire was being conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and Providence Fire Department investigators, they said in a press statement. A crane barge has moved in place to serve as a platform to assess the damage to the pier. Damaged lines on the pier are being drained and flushed to minimize any potential release, and undamaged fuel lines continue to be pumped out and rendered safe.
According to The Providence Journal, as Danish tanker Nordeuropa was offloading gasoline at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday during a thunderstorm, an explosion and fireball occurredpossibly from a lightning strike or static electricityand caused an inferno that damaged the pier. The tanker was scorched, but it escaped major damage, the Coast Guard said. Authorities have said that the fire would have been a much greater threat to life and property if the tanker had caught fire, too, given the proximity of Motiva's tank farm and a separately owned LNG tank.
Fire officials summarized the known damage at the pier: The fire caused the collapse of a 60-ft.-tall metal gantry that was used to support fuel-transfer lines from tankers and destroyed a large metal structure called a transfer manifold on the pier that was essential to the fuel-offloading process.
The Coast Guard has released the Nordeuropa to sail from the Jamestown anchorage after determining it to be seaworthy.
Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management continues to coordinate shoreline assessments, air monitoring in the vicinity of the pier, water quality sampling, and monitoring of environmentally sensitive areas. A double-boom has been positioned around the pier to mitigate any potential release.
Motiva and ExxonMobil are the two primary entry points for gasoline in the region, the paper said. Those terminals supply fuel to Rhode Island, as well as parts of Connecticut, Southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod.
Gas station owners in some parts of Rhode Island and on Cape Cod reported they had run low, or out, of gasoline, shortly after the terminal was closed. Delaney said arrangements the company has made to bring fuel in through alternate sources, such as two terminals it operates in Connecticut, appear to be working.
Getting heating oil into Rhode Island this winter should be less of a problem, some of the terminal operators told the paper, since there are three other places in the state where oil can be delivered by tanker.
Sprague Energy, in Providence, and Capital Terminal and ExxonMobil, in East Providence, all receive home heating oil and diesel fuel, they said.
Avery Noe, president of Capital, said his company could easily handle increased deliveries of home heating oil. The company could simply accept more frequent deliveries of oil, he said, adding that the company has plenty of storage. Noe said a new 175,000-barrel tank was completed last week, bring total storage capacity to 1 million barrels.
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