The Port of Grays Harbor has announced an agreement to lease property for a crude oil unloading and storage facility. The oil would arrive by train and then be loaded on to barges bound for refineries on the West Coast.
The port on the southwest Washington coast has been looking for other options since a proposal to build a coal export terminal there fell through last year.
Oil seems to be the next hot commodity. There are billions of barrels of petroleum in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. Some of it is already traveling through the Northwest by train to refineries in Anacortes, Tacoma and Cherry Point, north of Bellingham.