Superport

Guam Wants

The Oil

While a battle over whether a Japanese oil “superport” should be built in Palau continues, Guam has taken a first step towards enticing port backers to transfer their project from Palau to Guam.

Environmentalists, intent on preserving the pristine Palau coral reefs, are battling business interests eyeing Palau as a site for a huge oil storage complex for Japan.

The port, if built, would accom modate supertankers far too large for most conventional seaports. At present, only one port in Japan and one in Okinawa are capable of han dling the supertankers on Japanese soil. But backers are looking to build elsewhere in an attempt to bypass the environmental outcry that could develop in Japan.

Foes of the port went to the re cently-completed United Nations Trusteeship Council session, the final report of which urges careful attention to the environmental im pact of such a project. And Palau leaders publicly are taking a very neutral stance.

However, in a May 24 letter to Nissho-Iwai, the Japanese firm that put together a consortium of poten tial financiers for the project, Johnson Toribiong, chairman of the Palau Legislature’s Special Com mittee on Palau Port Authority, said it was the legislature’s intention “to conduct a referendum after the completion of the reasibility study to assure full political support for the port development.”

The letter said the US had agreed to pay $2OO 000 for an en vironmental study to establish guidelines for Nissho-Iwai’s econ omic studies.

Meanwhile, on Guam, the legislature has passed a bill calling for a team to study the feasibility of building the superport on Guam.

The bill’s sponsor, Senator Frank Bias, said construction costs for the port on Guam would be only US$3OO million, compared with $670 million for Palau.

Bias said “it would be premature to guess the degree of opposition” would be generated on Guam to the port project.