Wilmington Oil Pumpers Face Cleanup of Well Sites

For 18 years, Hilario Chavez has lived on Broad Street in a neatly kept white stucco home across from a vacant lot littered with trash and overrun by weeds.

While much of Chavez’s neighborhood has improved over the years, the lot across the street remains a dumping ground for passers-by. Discarded hamburger wrappers lie next to broken beer bottles; a pair of dilapidated cars sit rusting amid weeds and lumps of asphalt. For decades, the blackened pipes of an oil well have been visible behind a chain-link fence.

“It’s a lost battle to keep it clean,” said Chavez, 56, a longshoreman and father of three. “It’s a dump. It’s a wasteful shame to have a lot like this in the middle of a nice neighborhood.”

Like hundreds of other undeveloped properties in Wilmington, the site near Chavez’s home is used primarily for what lies beneath it: a rich oil field that yields millions of barrels of petroleum each year for both small and large producers.

Additional Blight

But while Wilmington residents like Chavez say they have accepted the presence of oil production in their largely industrial community, they complain that oil companies allow many of their properties to deteriorate, causing further blight in an already neglected area.

“It looks terrible and it hurts the community a lot,” Chavez said. “The companies have been bleeding these grounds for years. They should should put something back in the community.”

If efforts by the city of Los Angeles are successful, that may begin happening soon.

For the last several months, city officials have been studying ways to tighten regulations governing Wilmington’s oil operators. At the same time, officials are working to encourage voluntary improvements at all oil sites in Wilmington’s residential and commercial areas within 1 1/2 years. Eventually, the city will ask for improvements at sites in industrial areas as well.

Among other things, the city is asking that oil producers landscape their properties, camouflage oil wells and fence the perimeters of oil sites, not just the wells as is now done. Los Angeles officials believe that such measures would reduce illegal dumping--which oil companies blame for much of the litter--while beautifying neighborhoods.

Exxon Agrees

Exxon Co. USA, Wilmington’s largest oil producer, has indicated that it will go along with the city’s requests. Nevertheless, city officials are preparing an ordinance imposing a moratorium on oil production in Wilmington, to be used in the event that Exxon or other producers fail to comply voluntarily.

For Exxon alone, a moratorium could halt production of 6,000 barrels a day.

“It’s irresponsible to the community for the sites not to be better managed,” said Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who initiated the city’s efforts. “It’s a matter of mass neglect.”

Officials at Exxon, which operates about 60% of Wilmington’s estimated 655 oil wells, maintain that they have been good neighbors. Although they acknowledge that their properties sometimes become littered, they point out that the company has had its own cleanup program for more than 20 years and has been continually upgrading its properties.

“We’re doing our level best to cooperate,” said Exxon spokesman D. I. Bolding. “There hasn’t been great interest in this until recently. We thought we had been operating in compliance with the city before.”

No Complaints Yet

Officials at Sun Exploration and Production Co., which operates 136 wells, or 20% of Wilmington’s total, said they have not received any complaints from residents in the last several years and have not yet been contacted by the city about the problem.

The company, most of whose oil wells are in industrial areas, has had a cleanup program since it started operating in Wilmington in the early 1970s, said Stan Blossom, district operations manager.

“There’s an ongoing problem with people dumping stuff on our property--old couches, auto bodies,” Blossom acknowledged. “But we’ve tried to maintain our sites. . . . We’re not averse to improvements, but we’d have to look into what the city wants and what it would cost.”

The problem of unkempt oil wells in Wilmington dates back to the establishment of many oil production sites in the 1930s, before Los Angeles had strict conditions regulating the aesthetics of oil production sites, city officials say.

For sites that were developed later, stricter conditions were applied piecemeal--city officials say it would be a “monumental task” to discern the specific conditions regulating each of Wilmington’s 655 oil wells.

Little Regulation

Currently, oil-producing properties in Wilmington, Los Angeles’ most productive district, are regulated less for aesthetics than in any other area of the city, said Los Angeles Petroleum Administrator Hank Ganio. Moreover, because of the piecemeal application of regulations, the requirements that do exist are seldom enforced, according to Ganio, Flores and zoning officials.

“These areas have become mini-dumps that destroy the aesthetics of a neighborhood,” Ganio said. “You have an oil production well in a limited area of a particular site and the rest of it is just weeds or abandoned cars or junk. . . . You can’t tell companies to move their wells, but you can do things like fencing and landscaping and odor control.”

The city’s effort began in mid-March, when Flores sponsored a motion, approved by the City Council, to initiate a revision of Wilmington’s oil-production regulations. Flores said the motion followed several months of study and numerous complaints by the city to Exxon about unsightly conditions on its oil production properties.

“We weren’t getting much response,” said Flores, representative for Wilmington and surrounding Los Angeles communities. “They were not moving at the pace that I think is necessary.”

That changed, city officials said, when Flores’ motion was considered by the council’s planning and environment committee and “the problems were called forcefully to their attention.” Indeed, on May 6 the committee ordered zoning officials to draft an ordinance establishing a moratorium on oil production.

‘Riding Roughshod’

“The people who have these oil wells have been riding roughshod over the neighborhoods,” committee chairman Howard Finn said in an interview. “I see a moratorium as very drastic, but it isn’t as drastic as what those companies have done to the neighborhoods. They haven’t met their responsibility.”

Councilman Robert Farrell, the committee member who initiated the moratorium proposal, asserted in an interview, “We’ll shut the oil drilling down for a while until someone with some sense of civic responsibility decides to make the oil wells more attractive.”

The proposed moratorium, which would be in effect until oil companies meet the city’s standards in Wilmington, will be considered by the committee at its meeting on June 3.

Officials involved in the issue, however, say the moratorium’s purpose may have been accomplished--at least with Exxon. At a meeting this week with Flores, Exxon officials expressed a commitment to improve their sites. The city has not yet approached other producers.

If Exxon and other oil companies voluntarily comply with the city’s requests, Flores and other city officials said they may recommend that the committee not impose the moratorium.

Architect at Work

“We were working with the zoning administrator when this (proposed moratorium) happened,” said Bolding, the Exxon spokesman. “We now have an architect drawing up plans on each of the wells. We’ll get in compliance.”

While Bolding said the multinational oil company plans to meet with the city to further discuss the details of the proposed improvements--which the city has not fleshed out--he also said the company will have to consider the economics of the plan.

“There has to be an economic return to this,” he said. “If it comes to the point that the upgrading overrides the interest the company has, then we’ll have to consider that.”

Blossom of Sun Exploration agreed. “Based on the fact that our wells in Wilmington are marginal and the price of oil has dropped dramatically, it might be difficult to continue operating.”

For the small-scale Wilmington Oil Co., which operates only two wells in a residential area of the community, economics is the major issue, said Richard Young, a general partner in the company.

‘Tough Time’

“It’s a very, very tough time for the oil man,” Young said. With the recent plunge in oil prices, “our income has dropped by 60%. It’s a really tough time to be asking for improvements.”

Young also said that it appears that the city may be blaming oil producers for problems beyond their control.

“There’s a whole bunch of lots in Wilmington that have a lot of trash and don’t have anything to do with the oil operations. I don’t see how they can single out the oil operators. . . . If somebody dumps something on a lot, then somebody else thinks it’s OK and they dump, too. The question comes: Is it really the oil operator’s fault?”

City officials, however, point out that oil production sites in other areas--such as Torrance, Long Beach and Huntington Beach--have far more amenities than those in Wilmington.

At issue, they say, is equity.

“If they do it in Torrance and Long Beach, why can’t they do it in Wilmington?” said a Flores aide.

Improvements Installed

Exxon’s Bolding acknowledged that the company has installed aesthetic improvements in other cities where they are required. Sun’s Blossom said most of his firm’s operations are in an undeveloped area near Taft, Calif., where there are not strict aesthetic requirements.

Wilmington Oil, whose owners have five wells in Torrance, has made numerous aesthetic improvements there, Young acknowledged.

Similar conditions eventually will become part of a new ordinance regulating Wilmington’s oil wells, city officials say. Flores’ office is currently drawing up a draft proposal, which is to be refined by the city planning department and the city attorney and then set for public hearings.

An ordinance could be in effect within a year, Flores said.

“Finally we’ve taken an interest in Wilmington and we’ve taken a look at the oil operations and realized a lot of housekeeping needs to be done,” said Ganio, the petroleum administrator. “We’ve begun to focus some attention on an area where there hasn’t been much attention paid.”