PORT: Piloting A Course Toward The Future

CAPT. JIM ROCHE ... bullish on Delaware R. ports' future.

BY TONY WEST/ If dredging gets past the halfway mark in the year to come, Capt. Jim Roche will be relieved.

“I’ve spent a lot of time this year talking with elected representatives. We’re not quite over the hump yet,” reports Capt. Roche, who is president of the Pilots Association for the Bay & River Delaware. His lobbying has not been in vain, though. President Obama included money for the next phase of Delaware channel-deepening in his budget, and a bipartisan consensus among congressional leaders in the tri-state area appears to be holding firm. If all goes well, dredging will start back up this fall. Then Capt. Roche may breathe easier.

Obama’s proposal was for $31 million. Its chances look good in the Senate. The Republican-controlled House was a dicier matter; but Congressmen Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and Pat Meehan (R-Delco) pitched hard for it there and that body approved $29.4 million. Unless the project is blindsided by Washingtonian dysfunction, as Congress crumbles in this election year, the work is funded to restart soon.

Careful, cautious advance planning is a pilot’s mission. These skilled independent seamen are the only way ships of any real size can enter the many ports along the Delaware; they must be at the wheel. Like any other agent in the port’s economy, they want shipping to succeed and business to grow. Before they steer a path to profit, though, they must first steer clear of perils.

And Capt. Roche is clear about one thing. As ports up and down the East Coast ready deep-draft channels for the expected tide of container commerce from Asia when the Panama Canal expansion is complete in 2014, Philadelphia will be off the beaten path if we don’t complete our own 45-foot channel by then.

When the big ships come, the Pilots Association must be prepared for them. Capt. Roche and his colleagues are already looking ahead. “A large part of our job is to figure out how to do things safely,” Capt. Roche notes. By and large, the deeper-draft vessels are longer as well. The pilots have been getting practice in handling them. “We have already routinely brought 1,000-foot ships in,” says Capt. Roche, “but they are rare now.” To accommodate more of this traffic, the channel’s many bends are being widened to provide safe passage.

The Pilots Association has just initiated a major improvement in safety for the river. It’s the Sector Delaware Bay Intelligent Radar project. PABRD received a federal grant to expand radar traffic-tracking to cover the majority of the river. “We’re going to share this information with law-enforcement agencies for free,” says Capt. Roche. “It will play a very important role in safety and security.” This will be a complex technological and administrative project, the feeding of real-time radar data to a host of agencies simultaneously: three different state governments, the Coast Guard, FEMA and others. If traffic grows, this will provide the Delaware River ports with the tools to grow it safely.

For the time being, though – if you want to know what the traffic is like on the Delaware at any given moment, you’d be wise to rely on Capt. Roche’s brain. “Even now, without documentation, I can pretty much tell you everything that’s going on,” he avows.

But the traffic Capt. Roche is tracking is much less than he’d like it to be. Pilots’ business is down by 25% from the glory days of 2006, he estimates. Recessions are brutal on ports; when the economy is down, shipping goes down. Whatever happens next, you see first on the river. Like everyone else on the Delaware, he is looking anxiously for signs of a turnaround.

Of late, a few more rays of hope have been peeking into Capt. Roche’s sunny office in Queen Village on Columbus Boulevard. Especially hopeful is the salvation of the ConocoPhillips’ Trainer refinery in an audacious purchase by Delta Air Lines, which plans to make its own jet fuel there. This is an industry first in vertical integration for an airline. The deal shores up hopes for a future for the four other refineries on the Delaware – and with them a future for Philadelphia as an energy port.

Energy shipping will only become more expensive as cheap oil runs out. An energized developing world will not stay content with a small share of total fuel consumption and will bid for more juice aggressively in years to come. The Northeast will want reliable access to maritime energy transportation; and few of its ports can compete with Philadelphia in this infrastructure and talent pool. As Capt. Roche sees it, it would be a devastating blow for the tri-state area to let this industry slip away just when it will be most needed. “There will always be a demand for oil,” he points out. A bold experiment like Delta’s is a high-risk business strategy – but it beats junking a refinery and selling it for parts, at least as far as our region is concerned.

In the long run, thinks this master pilot, the Delaware River could become a pivotal port for energy markets. He has stuck a finger into the strong northwest wind – blowing from the Marcellus Shale region, where a huge supply of natural gas is being developed. The Marcellus Shale means inbound traffic, which the port has already seen some of: construction materials for wells and pipelines. In the end, though, it promises a fountain of cheap energy – which is great for all of us, except that it needs to be moved cheaply to stay cheap.

That’s where ports come in. Right now, fossil-hydrocarbon fuels are inbound to the Northeast. Someday, though, they may be outbound as well.

One possible recycling of our existing refinery infrastructure is to develop a liquefied natural-gas plant here, which could take in piped gas from the Marcellus Shale and convert it to a shippable product for overseas markets. Since the long-term outlook for oil prices is severe, the shipping industry, just like the airlines, is a huge petroguzzler looking for an escape hatch. That may come in the form of natural-gas conversion. “Last year, the first natural-gas-powered freighter was built,” he says with a touch of awe. “Emissions regulation has finally caught up with cargo ships.” They are stinkers, by comparison with cars. This may be bad news for shippers, but it’s good news for gas producers, whose fuel burns cleanly.

Envision a world in which clean cargo ships cruise the Atlantic – and regularly stop at Philadelphia for a load of cheap local natural gas. This is a channel the Delaware Valley would be smart to explore in decades to come, says Roche.

The Delaware River ports have another key marketing advantage, the Captain points out: Theirs is the largest freshwater port in the world. That’s why the Navy values it for storage (freshwater is less-corrosive than saltwater). Shippers don’t need that so much; but they do like to get out of bad weather. The closer a port lies to open water, the harder it is to manage in bad weather. And the bigger the ship, the more it has to lose from bad weather. The Delaware offers protection from storms because it is surrounded by landmasses. The container super ships of the future are terrifyingly topheavy. Their big risk lies at sea. Once they make it to an estuary like the Delaware, they are safe.

So there is good reason to hope we can sell our ports, Capt. Roche believes. One important market sign is that there are plans to build three new terminals, in three different states: Southport in South Philadelphia, Paulsboro in New Jersey and an expansion for Wilmington in Delaware. They are being built because there is demand.

“I don’t see the various ports along the river as being in competition with each other,” says Capt. Roche. The pilot argues that overall, they enhance each other by increasing options for shippers and manufacturers – and more options bring more business to the Delaware Valley region. “I have an optimistic view,” says Roche. “As difficult as the economy is now, there is much to look forward to down the line.”

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