COOS BAY -The commercial Dungeness crab season is ready to go off without a hitch this year.

 That is, if the weather cooperates and no more container ships spill oil into San Francisco Bay or Pacific Ocean waters.

 Oregon crabbers and processors met Tuesday and Wednesday in Newport and agreed early Wednesday to a $2 per-pound price to fishermen for the first 24 hours — a price which still must be ratified by Oregon Department of Agriculture Director Katy Coba. Discussions about the oil spill in San Francisco, several hundred miles south, were minimal in the negotiations, Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission Interim Administrator Hugh Link said.

 The oil spill likely won’t have a huge impact on the crab season overall, but some processors say there is little doubt some Oregon crabbers and processors will lose money this season.

 California Department of Fish and Game officials, following an executive order by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, defined boundaries for a delay in harvesting commercial crab and other fish until Dec. 1 or whenever the department and state health officials determine the fishing season can be opened. The regulatory opening of the Central California commercial crab normally is Nov. 15.

 The ocean boundary extends out to 3 nautical miles, north to the Point Reyes Lighthouse in Marin County and south to San Pedro Point in San Mateo County. The bay waters west of the Caquinez Bridge are closed as well.

 Some Oregon fishermen loaded their boats with pots and headed to San Francisco before the container ship Cosco Busan hit a bridge that resulted in a 58,000-gallon oil spill. Processors sent trucks full of supplies down to their buying stations in San Francisco.

 But this week, fishermen were torn: Set their gear or give up and head back north to Oregon fishing grounds?

Fishermen still can take part in the early California season, but there are limited offloading options outside of San Francisco. Crabbers can’t deliver into the city because keeping the crab live on their boats means re-circulating fresh water through their fish holds.

 And nobody — not the crabbers, the processors or the state — wants oil-tainted seawater anywhere near the crab delivered to the dock.

 “They don’t know whether to (return) north,” Hallmark Fisheries Production Manager Scott Adams said of Oregon boats.

 In Northern California, Oregon and Washington, though, fishermen and processors are busy. Crab pots need to be fixed and loaded onto boats so crabbers can set their gear at the end of November and deliver fresh Dungeness Dec. 1. Crews need to be hired to offload, cook, pick and truck the crab.

 The $2-a-pound price is about 35 cents a pound higher than processors paid last year. And a stable price for at least a day will provide some advantage for Oregon fishermen.

 “The deal was struck in a forthright, cooperative manner,” Port Orford fisherman Chris Aiello said. “Our only hope is for the market to set the price. How long it takes to do that is just a matter of days.”

 Yet the bay spill could throw a monkeywrench into the West Coast crab season that includes all three states.

 “San Francisco crab is ‘Thanksgiving crab’ and not used for much else,” Adams said, noting that restaurants and seafood markets are depending on supplies from fresh and frozen supplies from Alaska and Canada. Processors still take advantage of the Central California early fishery to get a main chunk of the season out of the way. It clears out production lines so a glut of crab doesn’t hit processors — and the market — all at once.

 A glut could ultimately mean a drop in price to fishermen.

 “A lot of that crab that would normally be consumed already,” Adams said, “will go to the freezer. They’re not going to sell fresh.”

 Crab, or any seafood product, that goes to the freezer means more cost to processors – a cost that would be absorbed by both processors and crabbers.

 “If there’s no crab, the point’s moot,” Adams said.

 “But if there’s a lot of crab, we’re in trouble.”