Leak in Oil Pipeline Shuts Down Beaches Along 3-Mile Stretch

A leak in a submerged pipeline sent more than 400 gallons of crude oil bubbling up into the ocean off Seal Beach on Wednesday, contaminating three miles of shoreline and closing beaches from Anaheim Bay to Belmont Pier in Long Beach, authorities said.

The spill, which was spotted by a private citizen standing on the beach early Wednesday morning, resulted from a leak in an Exxon Co. pipeline that stretches from Belmont Island, a drilling and production facility, to a processing plant in Seal Beach. Belmont Island lies about 1 1/2 miles southwest of the Seal Beach Municipal Pier. The leak is located in the pipeline about 100 yards offshore.

Exxon officials estimated that about 10 barrels of oil--420 gallons--escaped from the pipeline before production on the oil island was shut down and pressure in the line was reduced to zero, company spokeswoman Carrie Chassin said. The eight-inch pipeline, which is about 20 years old, normally pumps 1,300 barrels of crude oil, mixed with 2,000 gallons of seawater, daily to Seal Beach, she said.

“We are very sorry this happened,” Chassin said, speaking from the company’s production division western headquarters in Thousand Oaks. “We will do everything we can to clean it up as soon as we can.”

Four boats owned by Clean Coastal Waters, an oil industry cooperative that cleans up oil spills, were dispatched by Exxon to the site about 1:30 p.m. Crew members on one boat laid down 1,200 feet of boom, a floating curtain that contains the oil until it can be mopped up with highly absorbent pads.

The spill spread over a 300-by-500-yard area, stretching from the Seal Beach Municipal Pier across the San Gabriel River jetty, Coast Guard spokesman Charles Embleton said. Ocean currents carried some of the oil into waters off Long Beach, and lifeguards there closed the city beaches from Belmont Pier to 72nd Place in the afternoon.

All of the closed beaches are expected to be open by the weekend.

Embleton said most of the oil formed a “sheen” that discolored the water and gave off an odor, but he distinguished it from a slick or true spill in which the oil becomes “gooey” or “gunk.”

“This is minor,” Embleton said. “There’s just a small area of slick.”

Embleton said spills of this magnitude occur “six, maybe 10 times a year” in Southern California.

Waves washed oil from the spill onto “three or four miles” of shoreline in Long Beach and Seal Beach, Chassin said. Lifeguards spread straw on the beaches to soak up some of the oil, and a work crew hired by Exxon was busy Wednesday night skimming contaminated sand for removal and laying down plastic coverings to protect clean areas from the high tide.

A diver will clamp the pipeline today, and it is expected that it will be repaired, Chassin said.

Lifeguards in Seal Beach posted signs from the river jetty to Anaheim Bay warning swimmers of unsafe conditions. But a handful of surfers Wednesday evening were taking advantage of the rare chance to practice their sport in relative solitude, and could be seen riding waves through oily waters.

Hazard Discounted

Orange County Environmental Health Director Robert Merryman said the spill was “not any real significant health hazard. . . . It was discovered fairly quickly, and it will be mitigated very quickly. . . . It’s primarily a nuisance.”

Merryman said that as of Wednesday afternoon, there were no signs that the oil spill had harmed fish or water fowl. Some of the crude oil will be absorbed into the water, rather than floating on top and onto beaches, he said.

Some Seal Beach residents reacted angrily to the spill, while others took the news in stride.

“It shouldn’t take this long to respond,” Seal Beach resident Michael Acton, 32, said as he watched the cleanup effort on the beach Wednesday night.

Richard Dobbs, who lives aboard his boat in the Long Beach Marina, said he was “damn mad.” He said he will probably have to scrub the hull of his boat for hours to clean off the oil. Exxon spokeswoman Chassin, however, said the company had found no evidence of any oil from the spill in the marina.

Resident Philosophical

Ginger Peterson, a Leisure World resident in Seal Beach, said the oil spill was part of “the price we have to pay. . . . If we’re to be independent of the Arab nations, we have to drill for oil.”

In April, 1984, about 800 gallons of oil leaked into the ocean from an offshore rig owned by Houston-based Aminoil USA near Huntington Beach. Although small globules of tar washed up on more than a mile of Orange County coastline, there was little or no damage to wildlife, state officials said.

Times staff writer Danielle A. Fouquette contributed to this story.