Comment on South Portland’s ‘Clear Skies’ ordinance clouds pipeline company’s future, CEO says as trial begins

Tanker deliveries of foreign crude oil to Portland Pipe Line Corp. terminals in South Portland have essentially stopped in the last nine months, the company’s president and CEO testified Monday, kicking off the long-awaited federal trial challenging the city’s “Clear Skies” ordinance. The company is trying to show that the 2014 municipal ban on shipping crude oil from the city’s waterfront violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress sole power to regulate foreign and interstate trade. The company says the ban effectively prevents reversing the flow of its 236-mile underground pipeline – a change that would allow it to bring controversial tar sands oil from western Canada to South Portland and ship it to refineries along the Eastern Seaboard and elsewhere. The company’s lawyers opened their case before U.S.