$600M oil refinery blocked 50 years ago: 'It would have destroyed the Seacoast of NH'

DURHAM — Fifty years ago this week, a plan to locate a $600 million oil refinery in Durham was effectively blocked by local grassroots efforts, an opposition led by a trio of women that prevented 400,000 barrels of oil from being produced in the Seacoast a day.

In March 1974, Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis’ bid to have the nation’s largest oil refinery built in the college town was foiled by Durham voters and state legislators. The proposed Olympic Oil Refinery had garnered support from two influential figures — then-New Hampshire Gov. Meldrim Thomson and William Loeb, publisher of the Manchester Union Leader — but never crossed the finish line.

The movement to bar the plan from Onassis, one of the richest men in the world at the time, was led largely by Durham state Rep. Dudley Dudley, Nancy Sandberg, head of the citizens group Save Our Shores, and the late Phyllis Bennett, publisher and co-founder of Publick Occurrences.

The enormous development would have provided storage for 30 million barrels, placed a terminal located at the Isles of Shoals, required an oil pipeline to run through Great Bay, Newington, Portsmouth and Rye, and would have necessitated a large transportation presence in the region to move the oil from place to place.

“It would look like the worst parts of New Jersey or Texas,” said Dudley, a Durham resident, in an interview Wednesday. “A refinery would be bigger than anything there, and it would have just been loaded with super tanks and truck terminals and a refinery. It would have destroyed the Seacoast of New Hampshire. I don’t see how it could have done otherwise.”

“I think one of the great benefits of going through the intense battle 50 years ago is that it got a lot of people aware of the treasures that we have in the natural resources of the Seacoast,” added Sandberg, a fellow Durham resident. “It got a lot of people actively involved in running for office, be it locally, at the state level or beyond that.”

The two women and environmental advocates were recognized Monday night by the Durham Town Council for their historic work.

Legislation made history in New Hampshire

The well-documented, David versus Goliath-esque local lore, captured in David Moore’s 2022 book “Small Town, Big Oil,” began in June 1973, when a representative of Onassis’ met with Thomson in New Hampshire to discuss the idea of the refinery. Within months, Durham property owners were being approached by Onassis’ team about selling their land, and Publick Occurrences broke the news that the refinery plan was in the works, according to a May 2022 speech given by Dudley in Portsmouth.

Dudley, a freshman legislator, and Sandberg teamed up to advocate against the idea. Rallying locals, Dudley presented a 4,000 signature petition to Thomson showing all those opposed to the plan, a document so long it stretched down Main Street in downtown Durham, she said two years ago.

She then sponsored House Bill 18, the “Home Rule” bill that stated municipalities have the final say on certain projects, including the Olympic Oil Refinery.

At town meeting on March 6, 1974, Durham residents voted against zoning amendments that Olympic needed for approval. The final vote showed 1,254 residents voting against amendments compared to just 144 people in favor, per Dudley.

With the townspeople having had their say, House Bill 18 was voted on by New Hampshire House of Representatives members the next day. After House Bill 34, which would which would have established an energy siting body that could override zoning in municipalities, was voted down, legislators crossed party lines to pass House Bill 18 after an impassioned speech from Dudley.

The New Hampshire House of Representatives never specifically voted against the Olympic Oil Refinery, though the House Bill 18 vote essentially affirmed the plan would not move forward. Onassis didn’t fight the outcome.

“I want people to be ever vigilant when things are being proposed like an oil refinery, a housing complex, a new factory or a wind farm,” Dudley said. “I think people just have to be willing to study it and be willing to determine whether or not it’s a good idea for our area. I didn’t really study the oil refinery. It was more intuition that caused me to say no adamantly at the very beginning. There were people, well-intentioned, smart people, who wanted to study it, and eventually they came around to the same answer that those of us who were there at the beginning had. That was good. It also led me to a place that believed that there was a place for home rule in our democracy.”

“Judging by the experience of small towns in Texas, Louisiana and California, I think the refinery itself would have taken up 3,000 acres in the town of Durham right next to the bay, then connected to a pipeline into Rye,” Sandberg recalled. “We also realized that along with the refinery would have come a huge transportation effort to get the product out of here, including hundreds of rail cars to transport the product and a huge trucking system along I-95 to truck it in three different directions.”

“The chronic spillage that would have happened there would have ruined our beaches and ruined New Hampshire’s huge tourism industry,” she added. “It would have had huge effects on New Hampshire’s environment, economy and ecology. It would look very different from what we have now.”

'An attack on her home'

Dudley’s daughter, Morgan Dudley, was a teenager at the time of her mother’s rise to fame, a period she found to be embarrassing at times as an adolescent. She remembers their family’s landline ringing off the hook throughout the entire movement, prompting her “pacifist” father to at one point rip it off the wall.

“To her, it felt like an attack on her home,” she said of her mother’s reaction to the refinery plan. “She took this on with every fiber of her being and it completely consumed her time and her energy.”

Years later, Morgan Dudley co-authored the award-winning screenplay “Oil and Water” along with Alfred Catalfo, a film about the efforts from her mother, Sandberg, Bennett and the endless volunteers who stood in unison against Olympic Oil Refinery. The script has generated interest from a production company into possibly making the story into a feature film or limited television series.

Morgan Dudley compared the Save Our Shores movement to the current political climate in the United States and the divide over the upcoming general election.

“It seems more relevant today than it ever had been in my life because it’s a story about democracy,” she said of the refinery opposition. “What it shows is that on many topics, there is an interest in common good, and Republicans and Democrats should be able to work together to reach decisions that benefit everybody.”

Her mother went on to become the first woman elected to serve on New Hampshire’s Executive Council, and a portrait of her hangs in the Statehouse in Concord.

“The fact that these three women with no power defeated these three men with endless power, it’s a miracle as I look back on it,” Morgan Dudley added. “In the early 1970s, that was unheard of. At that time, my mother had to get my father’s permission to have a credit card in her name. I’m in awe. She’s my hero. I’m so proud of what she accomplished.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Onassis $600M oil refinery blocked 50 years ago in Durham NH