Experts See Little Danger to Coast From Malfunctions in Oil Pipelines

The likelihood is small that an oil spill from an offshore oil pipeline will cause catastrophic damage to Orange County coastal communities, authorities said Thursday after the oil leak off Seal Beach.

Vern Gaede, chief of the oil and gas division of the state Department of Conservation, said that since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, in which a platform spewed thousands of gallons of oil for six days, state and federal agencies have improved their resources to meet any such crisis.

‘We Learned Our Lesson’

“We’re all part of the same system, and we all have our roles,” he said. “We learned our lesson in Santa Barbara in 1969. We are all ready to respond immediately now.”

Jim Mason, spokesman for the Minerals Management Services Division of the U.S. Interior Department, said oil leaks from offshore pipelines are not a particular worry of state and federal agencies that regulate those operations. Only three platforms in the area are now in federal waters.

But Mason said spills from oil tankers that operate off the Southern California coast are potentially more hazardous than the handful of pipelines in the area.

Wednesday’s spill, Mason said, “is extremely minor. We keep records of these small spills. But our fear is that a spill off a tanker would cause much more damage.”

Petty Officer Jim Porter, a spokesman for the Coast Guard’s marine safety office overseeing Thursday’s cleanup of the oil spill, said swift action was taken immediately.

He said that when the spill was detected at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, only a small amount of light oil was reaching the beach, giving the Coast Guard time to find what, and who, was responsible. Exxon found the leak at 1:30 p.m. and quickly shut off the pipeline.

“But if we had seen black oil on the beach at 7:30 a.m., we would have moved immediately to clean it up, even before trying to find out who was responsible,” Porter said.

Porter said the Coast Guard has the money and resources to move quickly to clean any spill when the company responsible will not, or cannot, clean it itself. Exxon, however, took the lead in this cleanup effort, he said.

“We’ve got a lot of resources and a lot of money available. We can move in immediately and remove the oil,” Porter said.

Dennis Kelly, a biologist who advises environmental groups, said the oil companies and the state and federal agencies are now more responsible in reacting to any spills.

“The oil companies, the agencies . . . everybody is better organized than in 1969 when Santa Barbara happened. I don’t see any serious damage coming from spills,” he said.

Agreement on Threat

Kelly, however, agreed that oil tankers, especially those operating under foreign flags, are the most serious threat to Southern California coastal communities.

“Those are the accidents waiting to happen,” he said. “The U.S. tankers are fine, they are regulated. But the foreign tankers are not, and they usually have untrained crews. Anything could happen with those.”