Firms that repeatedly spill oil targeted in crackdown

Santa Barbara County supervisors this week began a crackdown on oil companies that repeatedly spill fuel, asking staff to draft legislation that would increase penalties, make companies pay for the emergency response and give the county the tools to shut down repeat offenders.

The tough plans were prompted by the many complaints that supervisors heard Tuesday during a four-hour hearing on the Greka Energy Corp., a Santa Maria-based company with fields in northern Santa Barbara County.

Emergency crews have responded to 400 spills at Greka facilities since the company began operations in 1999, county officials said. The spills have sent 452,000 gallons of toxic fuel into local creeks and soil, they added.

“This has created outrage in the community,” said Board Chairman Salud Carbajal. “We need to take as aggressive action as we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Robert O’Brien, a Greka lawyer, said the company had taken steps to improve and was being unfairly targeted among 12 operators in the region. He said two large spills in the last six weeks, which released 159,000 gallons of crude, may have been the result of sabotage by competitors or eco-terrorists.

O’Brien said a former FBI investigator hired by the company has found evidence that the company’s alarms and electrical boxes had been tampered with before the spills. The evidence, he said, has been turned over to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.

“The company wants to be treated fairly,” O’Brien told supervisors. “It doesn’t want to be singled out.”

Supervisors appeared unconvinced. County staff provided data showing that Greka is responsible for more oil field releases than all of the other producers combined.

“What about the 398 other spills -- were those sabotage, too?” asked Carbajal.

Greka, which extracts the last drops of oil from wellheads abandoned by larger companies, owns 77 onshore production and processing facilities in the Santa Maria area. The company is a subsidiary of Green Dragon, a China-based gas supplier owned by Randeep Grewal.

Regulators who respond to spills say the company’s problems stem largely from its refusal to replace aging pipeline and equipment. Peter B. Reich, of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, said the firm needed to assess and fully upgrade its infrastructure to avoid repeated violations.

“If they dedicated time and money, this operation would improve dramatically,” Reich said.

County fire officials said their investigation found that faulty alarms and poorly maintained containment basins allowed thousands of gallons of crude to flow unimpeded in the most recent spills. Greka workers are poorly trained in cleanup and, in one instance, failed to build a containment dam ordered by an official from the state Department of Fish and Game, officials said.

Because of that lapse, 84,000 gallons of crude that spilled Jan. 5 flowed 1 1/2 miles down a creek instead of half that distance, said Joshua Curtis, an environmental scientist with Fish and Game. Curtis said the company’s inadequate response was typical.

At Tuesday’s hearing, environmentalists, ordinary citizens and representatives of competing companies joined regulators in coming down hard on the company.

Dorian Farr, a former Santa Barbara County planning commissioner, said the county had already given Greka too many chances.

“You already have the tools. You don’t need another ordinance,” Farr said. “Your course is clear. Use the authority you have and shut Greka down.”

But supervisors stopped short of that. Instead, the board ordered the draft ordinances as well as staff reassignments so that at least five county workers, instead of one, would be monitoring Greka and other oil companies.

The supervisors did not specify details of the tougher regulations they asked staff members to draft. The proposals are expected to come back before the board in two months. The county could shut down violators who fail to pay emergency-response costs, county officials said.

Supervisors also asked County Executive Mike Brown to take whatever steps are available to bring Greka into compliance with health and safety regulations, and to reduce the number of violations.

The board voted 4 to 0 on the crackdown. Supervisor Brooks Firestone recused himself from the vote because he leases property to Greka at the site of one of the recent spills.

Supervisor Joe Centeno, one of the board’s more conservative members, said it was imperative to act because Greka had not done enough on its own.

“We want to police the industry, not just Greka,” he told the company’s lawyer. “You are in the cross hairs now because of these terrible spills.”

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catherine.saillant@latimes.com