First Fuel Shipments in a Decade Leave Port of Milwaukee This Spring, Raising Concerns

by Lee Bergquist (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) ... Ethanol is being shipped out of the port this spring — the first time either ethanol or petroleum products have moved out of the port in at least a decade, according to port officials.

Appleton-based U.S. Oil loaded its first shipment of 100,000 barrels of ethanol on April 30 — a barge bound for Canada from a newly refurbished liquid cargo pier that juts 2,000 feet into the harbor, in the shadow of the Hoan Bridge.

The $3.6 million upgrade to the pier — subsidized with a $2.9 million state harbor assistance grant — has the capability to move ethanol and petroleum products, including crude oil.

The pier's gleaming white pipelines are connected to U.S. Oil's storage tanks and facilities on Jones Island where liquid petroleum gas, or LPG, is also stored. The company's lease agreement with the port also allows for construction of a plant that scraps old tires and converts them into energy.

"Is this what we want for our port, and our lakes?" asked Eric Hansen of the local chapter of the Citizens Acting for Rail Safety, a Midwest group that is tracking rail shipments of crude oil, some of which moves through Milwaukee.

But a company spokeswoman said that it no longer has such plans; and in fact, the city amended its lease agreement with U.S.Venture in September prohibiting crude oil storage or shipping at the port.

"We thought that was a big win," said Cheryl Nenn of Milwaukee Riverkeeper, an environmental group. "But ethanol is a new potential source of pollution and we want to make sure that all precautions are taken."

U.S. Venture's Alison Fiebig said the company has no plans to move LPG over the lake. She also said there are no current plans for a tire-to-energy facility along Milwaukee's lakefront.

The company's interest, she said, is shipping ethanol safely over the Great Lakes to Ontario and Quebec, where domestic supplies can't meet demand for renewable fuel additives to gasoline.

About 16% of the 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol exported in 2017 moved through Great Lakes ports, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

The company has shipped ethanol over the lakes from the port of Green Bay for six years without incident, she said, a mode of transport that limits the number of ethanol-laden trucks on freeways. READ MORE