Blending butane in Spring Township will add to tanker-truck traffic in Sinking Spring

by Steve Reinbrecht

Update – Feb. 7

An average of 80 trucks a day drive in and out of Sunoco Logistics’ facility in Montello, near Sinking Spring, according to Jeff Shields, a Sunoco Logistics spokesman.

The terminal stores and distributes refined products, predominantly gasoline, diesel and heating oil, he wrote in an e-mail.

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More tanker trucks will be driving through Sinking Spring, according to plans for a butane-blending facility that Spring Township supervisors approved last month.

Sunoco Logistics wants to build the butane system in the middle of its existing tank farm, between Mountain Home and Fritztown roads, adjacent to Sinking Spring.

This matters because more trucks will further clog roads in Southwestern Berks – especially because tanker trucks with petroleum products must stop at the area’s five rail crossings.

So how many tanker trucks use local roads to come and go with their fossil fuel loads?

A local official laughed when I told him nobody was calling me back from Sunoco Logistics, which I called and visited to ask how many tanker trucks use its terminals in Montello.

“They don’t want anyone to know,” he said.

Sinking Spring officials are hoping to convince state and federal officials that Sinking Spring is a bottleneck for vital commerce – in this case petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, propane and heating oil.

Officials hope the distinction helps the borough get a federal grant.

A study years ago counted 100 trucks a day, Berks transportation planner Alan Piper said, and he expects the number has grown. He helped me find state data from 2016 that show, in general, almost 3,900 trucks -- anything larger than a pickup -- drive on Penn Avenue between Columbia and Route 724 on an average weekday.

Fuel oil trucks chug through town all day long before making deliveries throughout the region. Sunoco, Gulf and Amerigas have tanks in the area. Tanks, pipes, and other infrastructure cover about 100 acres.

The complex in Montello is Sunoco Logistics' eastern pipeline system headquarters, as well as a trucking terminal and a major midstream terminal for refined products.

Sunoco's pipelines out of Montello provide gasoline, diesel fuel, and heating oil to large markets in Pennsylvania and New York. Sunoco Logistics, which has extensive tanks, pipes and other equipment in the Montello area, plans to build a pipeline called Mariner East 2. 

The new pipeline would nearly quadruple the amount of petroleum product gushing through pipes in Sinking Spring, to 345,000 barrels a day. A barrel is 42 gallons.

In November, Sunoco paused the project, blaming the delay on problems getting permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

In any case, in January, Spring Township supervisors granted Sunoco Logistics final approval to build a station to add butane to gasoline in the middle of the property it owns between Mountain Home and Fritztown roads in Spring Township, just across the border with Sinking Spring. Trucks would bring the butane, which would be stored in a 90,000-gallon tank.