February 25, 1976
Page 4387
OIL AND THE MAINE COAST.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, late last year, Peter Bradford, a member of Maine's Public Utilities Commission, published his book — "Fragile Structures: A Story of Oil Refineries, National Security, and the Coast of Maine."
A review of the book appeared in the New York Times. I ask unanimous consent that the review be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the review was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
FRAGILE STRUCTURES: A STORY OF OIL REFINERIES, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE COAST OF MAINE
(By Newton W. Lamson)
An oil refinery at a deepwater port along the coast of Maine has, since the 1960's, been one of the most persistent and elusive dreams of would-be petroleum industry entrepreneurs.
As Peter Amory Bradford, a 33-year-old member of Maine's Public Utilities Commission, explains in his highly readable book, "Fragile Structures," all the necessary elements were present.
"Eastern Maine was a depressed area," he said. "New York and Boston needed low-sulphur oil. The oil industry was moving toward supertankers. Maine had the only deepwater harbors on the East Coast. New England felt unfairly burdened by oil import restrictions. An imaginative and energetic man who knew all these things needed only oil and money to get rich."
But no one has and not for want of trying. The quest for official sanction for a refinery is about to enter its eighth year. So far 10 proposals have been put forward and five sites proposed.
Of the 10 projects, only one, the Pittston Company's proposed 250,000 barrel-per-day refinery complex in Eastport, remains alive, and it is still facing, after two years of hearings, more than 8,000 pages of testimony and more than $2 million in costs, a formidable series of obstacles.
The first of these proposals was for a refinery at Machiasport, a quiet fishing village of 800 inhabitants deep in impoverished Washington County less than 50 miles from the Canadian border. In "Fragile Structures," the Machiasport project becomes for Mr. Bradford a microcosm of the mistaken oil policies and outright political intrigue that eventually led to the energy crisis debacle in 1973.
"A few incidents in the 1960-70 decade are signposts for any inquiry into what went wrong," he said. "The Machiasport oil refinery is one of them."
At the heart of the Machiasport proposal was the creation of a foreign trade zone in the area. Nine such zones existed elsewhere in the country at the time of Maine's application and no such application had ever been denied. Nor was Maine's denied; it simply was never acted upon.
The promoters had lined up plenty of local support, including all six New England Governors. New England had a good deal at stake. By 1970, according to a Cabinet-level study, New Englanders were paying, under the oil import program then in effect, $1.65 more per barrel for domestic oil than it would have paid for foreign oil landed in Maine.
But the promoters were mavericks. None of them belonged to the domestic oil industry establishment, and even with the support provided by the Governors and Congressmen from New England, they were no match for an oil lobby willing to pull out all stops to head off a Maine supertanker port and foreign trade zone.
In 1968, Mr. Bradford said, oil interests "regarded supertankers the way Carrie Nation would have regarded improved whisky bottles."
"Their possible encroachment at Machiasport was to inspire such oil state Senators as Gordon Allott of Colorado and Clifford Hansen of Wyoming to defend the Maine coastal environment with more passion than they had ever expended on threatened terrain in their home states," he added.
What appeared to the public to be a series of stunning victories for environmentalists, Mr. Bradford argues, was in fact a series of victories orchestrated at the very highest levels of Government by the oil industry — victories arrived at through political payoffs, intrigue and outright influence peddling that spanned the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Administrations.
Mr. Bradford, moreover, is in a position to substantiate his charges. He joined the staff of then-Governor Kenneth M. Curtis in 1968 and was one of his key aides throughout the Machiasport affair. In 1971, he became a member of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, and he served as staff director of Gov. Curtis's Task Force on Energy.
"Fragile Structures" is in a number of respects a rare book. It is a true insiders' book, but the presentation is a balanced one. Although Mr. Bradford helped write one of the most important environmental laws passed by any state in recent years, he is in no sense a hidebound environmentalist.
He writes feelingly of Maine's rural poor and recognizes and applauds the economic benefits that a refinery would bring to both the state and Washington County.
And "Fragile Structures," despite the nature of the material, is anything but dry. The prose is urbane, often witty, and Mr. Bradford never fails to capture the ironies what has been for him and other New Englanders a numbing series of humiliations at the hands of Washington officials, bureaucrats, and lobbyists.