Offshore Drilling Foes Dread Risk of Spills, Ugliness

Coastal community leaders, who are marshaling forces against a plan to open 54 square miles off Orange County shores to oil exploration, say the potential energy benefits are not worth taking the environmental risks involved.

City council members in Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and San Clemente expressed concern about the risk of major oil spills fouling their pristine beaches, particularly since much of the area proposed for leasing lies in the Newport-Inglewood earthquake fault zone.

They also are worried that the diesel-powered oil rigs will generate air pollution, obstruct commercial shipping lanes, spoil an unblemished ocean view for millions of beach tourists and coast dwellers, and reduce property values along the coast.

Newport Beach View

“I think the environmental concerns outweigh the value of the oil they would pump,” Newport Beach Councilwoman Evelyn Hart said Saturday of a U.S. Interior Department compromise plan, unveiled last week, that would lift the moratorium on exploration from six tracts off the Orange County shoreline.

But oil industry leaders and government regulators alike say there is adequate protection for the environment, both in terms of new, improved drilling technology and of the multiple review process that must take place before leasing, drilling or pumping can begin.

Stringent regulations, combined with the use of state-of-the-art drilling techniques, can prevent oil spills similar to the Santa Barbara Channel disaster that killed wildlife and fouled the beaches in 1969, they said.

Point to Safety Record

The proof of their argument, they say, lies in the safety record of 16 current oil operations in federal waters from Santa Barbara to Huntington Beach, and a like number of platforms and man-made oil islands operating in state waters up to 3 miles out.

“We think our OCS (outer continental shelf) program has the safest environmental record anywhere,” said Bill Grant, Pacific regions director of the Interior Department’s minerals management service division, which oversees offshore oil leasing.

Grant said that spills from all 16 of the offshore rigs he cited amounted to 10 barrels of oil last year, while together they were pumping 80,000 barrels daily.

U.S. Coast Guard officials say there have been no major oil spills in coastal waters since the Santa Barbara Channel blowout in February, 1969.

“You have an occasional loss of a barrel because a valve didn’t operate properly,” said Coast Guard Lt. Robert Varanko of the service’s marine safety division in Long Beach.

“But those minor spills are handled by the platform itself, which has cleanup equipment, booms, flotation devices and vacuum lines,” Varanko said. “These platforms are so well designed that if it rains, each of the decks have catch basins so that (nothing) . . . would fall into the water.”

The controversy stems from a political compromise struck early last week between members of California’s congressional delegation and Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, as the moratorium on resource development of California coastal waters was about to expire.

In exchange for protection of nearly 98% of the state’s coastal waters, the congressmen, most of whom represent districts in the central or northern part of the state, agreed to the opening of 150 tracts of the ocean floor. One-third of those tracts are off Southern California.

The tentative plan identifies six tracts off Huntington and Newport beaches, four off Long Beach, five off Oceanside and 22 in the outer Santa Monica Bay. Another 14 tracts in the Santa Maria Basin, south of San Luis Obispo, would be opened to oil company bidding.

Most in Northern Waters

The remaining 99 tracts that would be opened under the compromise unveiled last Tuesday in Washington are in the Elk River Basin, off economically depressed Humboldt County in Northern California.

The remaining 6,310 tracts would be covered by a moratorium through the year 2000. These are in waters off Big Sur, the San Francisco coast and peninsula, the Farallon Islands and Mendocino County, Point Reyes, Bodega Bay and key military areas. The plan would, however, permit the drilling of one exploratory well in three areas--off Santa Cruz, in Bodega Bay and off Point Arena--to study geological formations.

Bob Hattoy, Southern California director of the Sierra Club, said his organization must “reluctantly” support the compromise because it protects most of the state’s coastline.

But Hattoy said there remain significant environmental concerns about oil exploration and drilling off Southern California.

“You have a whole range of negatives,” Hattoy said. “We’re concerned about the potential for (oil) spills, especially because of the potential for earthquake damage.”

The six tracts off Orange County are each 9 square miles. They lie roughly between two known fault zones--the Newport-Inglewood Fault and the Palos Verdes Fault.

A temblor along the Newport-Inglewood Fault caused the devastating Long Beach earthquake of 1933, which led to a sweeping revision of building codes. Seismic experts have said another major earthquake along that fault zone poses the greatest danger of death and destruction in Southern California.

But they rate the probability of one occurring there in the next 30 to 50 years as very low.

State and federal oil regulation officials discount the environmentalists’ fears about drilling near earthquake faults.

Earthquake Concern Discounted

“That is so patently ridiculous, it’s pathetic,” said Don Lande, an oil expert with the state Division of Oil and Gas, which regulates offshore drilling in state coastal waters.

“If a well crosses a fault line to get to the oil and there is movement along the fault, all that happens is the well is sheered off right at the fault,” Lande said. “It’s capped off.”

In addition, pipelines and oil rig equipment are built to withstand a major quake and to have shut-off valves that are activated automatically in the event of damage to any part of the system, Lande said.

“It’s as safe as we can make it technologically with our present-day knowledge. It’s never going to be 100% safe, but we’re getting darned close.”

Arthur O. Spaulding, general manager of the Los Angeles-based Western Oil and Gas Assn., pointed out that during the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, Signal Hill oil wells directly in the fault line were undamaged.

Seismic experts and environmental scientists said that since there has not been a major quake associated with a producing offshore oil field, it is impossible to say whether there would be significant damage.

Lande said that since the Santa Barbara Channel spill, which was estimated to have killed more than 30,000 marine birds, federal regulators insist on deep burial of pipe casings during the drilling process, to prevent pressurized oil from escaping in the event of a blowout.

Strictly Regulated Business

Beyond that, Grant said, oil companies must follow stringent rules to prevent spills of any kind. He said an oil-spill contingency plan is required for each phase of operation, and the plans are subject to review by federal, state and local officials as part of the permit process.

Not only has new technology reduced the risk of oil spills but their impact on wildlife also may have been exaggerated, according to a UC Irvine researcher.

George Hunt, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCI, said studies of marine birds in the North Sea, where there have been many more major oil spills in recent years, have found that the birds’ natural mortality rate far exceeds deaths due to spills.

Birds such as the brown pelican, a species that has suffered serious setbacks attributed to the pesticide DDT, are at greater risk because their numbers have been depleted already, Hunt said.

Oil spills can do serious damage to such marine mammals as sea otters and seals, as well as to plankton, fish eggs and fish larvae, Hunt said, but he agreed that the amount of oil spilled from present offshore wells has been “fairly small,” and that natural seepage of oil from the ocean floor far exceeds it.

“Except in special circumstances, I don’t think we have to be quite as worried as we were,” Hunt said. “I don’t think we have to go on full alert and take as aggressive a posture against the oil companies as we have in the past.

“But we do need to keep a very good vigilance over them,” Hunt said.

Ugliness Factor

Oil spills aside, community leaders and environmentalists like Hattoy remain concerned about air pollution, safety and the appearance of the coastline being marred by the sight of steel platforms.

“The Environmental Protection Agency has said in their reports that the amount of air pollutants emitted from the average rig in one year is equivalent to 25,000 cars driving on the freeways for a year,” Hattoy said.

Industry officials dispute the air pollution argument, the potential effects on recreational boating and, just from an aesthetic point of view, the effect on the tourist industry.

William A. Nott, president of the Sportfishing Assn. of California, said his industry does not object to future drilling plans so long as they do not threaten highly productive fishing beds.

‘Enough Flat Horizon’

“In general, our position is that in the area of the Long Beach (oil drilling) islands, there is now a totally new environment that enhances fishing,” Nott said. “I think the only objection we would have is if there were a great amount of pollution or contamination introduced. . . and so far, they’ve been pretty clean.”

Nott said that Coast Guard requirements for lighting and other markers render moot concerns that have been voiced about boating safety.

It would appear that the key objection to which there is no apparent resolution remains aesthetics.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess,” said Coast Guard Lt. Varanko. “Personally, I’ve seen enough flat horizon to welcome anything of interest.”

But local officials are concerned about the onshore facilities that may go with any offshore development. And they are concerned about their lack of input in the compromise agreement, said Newport Beach Councilwoman Hart.

“If we as a nation really needed this oil, I would not be interested in a moratorium,” said Hart, whose city is visited by an estimated 10 million tourists annually.

“But I’m not convinced that we need this oil. So why should we wreck our coastline?” she asked.

“It is one of the most outstanding resources this country has.”