Navy’s Red Hill debacle is both a warning and an opportunity

In March, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that the Navy would finally drain the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii and close it down permanently. Built during the Second World War, the Red Hill facility is the largest underground fuel storage facility in the world, holding up to 250 million gallons of fuel, and critically important for the U.S. military.

Hawaiian officials have long called for the facility to be closed because it is a danger to the local water supply. The Sierra Club estimates that as many as 180,000 gallons of fuel have spilled over the lifespan of the tanks, and a Navy-sponsored report estimated that every year there is a 28 percent chance of a major spill between 10,000 and 30,000 gallons.

The November 2021 leak that prompted the facility’s closure saw an estimated 14,000 gallons of fuel contaminate the local water supply and sicken hundreds of residents on and off base. Nearly 10,000 households were affected.

The Department of Defense’s decision to permanently close the facility puts the military in the worst possible position — it has imposed human costs on its own sailors and their families, while also losing a strategically important facility in the Pacific. Years of denials and delays also damaged the Nay’s relationship with the local community in Hawaii.

The Red Hill debacle is an example of what could happen if the military similarly mismanages energy infrastructure at an overseas base. The unexpected closure of a fuel storage site overseas would handicap U.S. forces and throw regional strategy and military planning into turmoil.

The disaster at Red Hill has also exposed the fragility of the fuel distribution infrastructure which overly relies on large, aging bulk fuel storage facilities that are a hazard in peacetime but also vulnerable to attack. And we need not look any farther than the current war in Ukraine for proof that failures in fuel infrastructure can have devastating consequences.

The Defense Department’s vague plan to use a mix of commercial storage as a replacement for Red Hill exposes the truth that there is not a replacement. A 2018 study assessed the cost of moving the facility at up to $10 billion dollars and estimated it could take as long as three decades; what’s more, the Red Hill closure comes on top of existing preoccupation with U.S. military fuel storage capacity in the region.

The overdue closure of Red Hill is also an opportunity for the United States to reevaluate its energy infrastructure in the Pacific. The military should invest in the energy resilience and efficiency of its facilities across the region, perhaps as part of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, and look for alternative concepts for sustaining U.S. capability in the region.

Over the last two decades, the U.S. military has quietly upgraded the energy resilience and efficiency of its bases with micro grids, solar power and other forms of alternative energy. How much more can be done to help reduce the demand for petroleum?

In addition to prioritizing efficiency, the DOD needs to be pragmatic in seeking alternatives to bulk petroleum storage like the Army’s Project Pele nuclear mini-reactors, solar or bulk hydrogen.

Hydrogen is gaining traction with our Pacific allies like Japan and Australia. Is there an opportunity to replace petroleum with hydrogen fuel in some places while strengthening our military and economic alliances with those countries? Geologic formations like salt caverns, saline aquifers, and depleted oil and gas wells provide the ability to store massive quantities of hydrogen fuel underground and replace the storage lost at Red Hill.

Investments in alternative energy would be received well by U.S. partners in the region at a time when the U.S. is jockeying for influence in the Pacific. Focusing on clean and resilient energy infrastructure is also a way to engage nations who see climate change as an existential threat but are less interested in wading into a competition between the United States and China.

The repeated fuel spills from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii are an embarrassment to the military, and it is long overdue that the facility be closed despite the dilemma this poses for military planners. But the story doesn’t have to end there. The closure of the Red Hill facility can be the catalyst for a new strategy of defense-oriented energy investments in the Pacific that makes U.S. forces more resilient, helps meet U.S. climate goals, and strengthens our relationship with allies and partners in the region.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Marine Corps or the Department of Defense.

Walker D. Mills is a Marine Corps infantry officer currently serving in Cartagena, Colombia. He is a non-resident fellow at Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future War and a non-resident WSD-Handa fellow at Pacific Forum, a Hawaii-based think tank. Follow him on Twitter @WDMills1992