Project to Route Crude 260 Miles : Arco Pulls Out as Oil Pipeline Manager

Atlantic Richfield Co. reported Tuesday that it will relinquish its role as project manager of a pipeline that it and three other oil companies plan to build to pump crude oil from Santa Barbara County, through the San Fernando Valley, to refineries in the South Bay.

John Moffitt, a senior engineer with San Francisco-based Chevron Corp., said Chevron probably will replace Arco as the project manager. Another Chevron spokesman, Al Swanson, said details are being worked out.

Representatives of Arco and Chevron said the changeover will not affect plans to build the pipeline. The other two companies involved in the project are Houston-based Shell Oil Co. and Texaco Inc. of White Plains, N. Y.

Arco spokesman Al Greenstein said Arco will withdraw as project manager by the end of this month because it no longer expects to be one of the major users of the line. Arco remains a partner for now and will decide by next spring whether to continue as such, Greenstein said.

The project manager’s job includes planning, obtaining permits, directing construction and operating the pipeline.

Known as the Southern California Pipeline System, the project involves the construction of a 260-mile pipeline costing $350 million. The first section of the pipeline, 30 inches in diameter, would stretch about 130 miles, running from west of Santa Barbara to Kern County. The second 130-mile segment would stretch from south of Bakersfield to the South Bay refineries.

The oil companies would prefer a route through the Santa Clarita Valley, along Foothill Boulevard through Burbank. An alternate route would run through the middle of the San Fernando Valley along Balboa Boulevard.

Some residents who live along the proposed routes have expressed worries that the pipeline will leak. The project is being studied for its environmental impact under the direction of the California Department of Transportation.

Chevron plans to use the pipeline partly to ship oil from its offshore fields near Point Arguello in the Santa Maria Basin. That area is considered by industry officials to be the most lucrative domestic find since oil was discovered in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay in the late 1960s.