Local News in Brief : Oil Pipeline Plan Hits a New Snag

A long-delayed plan to build a 1,030-mile oil pipeline from the Los Angeles Harbor to Texas has hit yet another bureaucratic snag with the revocation by the federal government of a crucial permit.

Complaining that the San Pedro-based Pacific Texas Pipeline Co. had failed to pay nearly $100,000 in fees, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management rescinded its 1986 decision to let the company run the pipe under federal land in four states.

The line cannot be built without the permit, but Pac-Tex may apply for a new permit if it pays the $99,538 it owes the bureau. “The only thing that prevented them from going forward was they didn’t pay the bill,” said bureau spokesman Jim Woodworth.

The proposed 42-inch-wide underground pipeline would carry up to 900,000 barrels of crude oil a day--most of it from Alaska’s North Slope, but also from California’s outer Continental Shelf, on-shore sources and Pacific Rim countries. The oil would arrive at Los Angeles Harbor by tanker and travel via the pipeline to Midland, Tex., where it would enter 14 other systems for transportation to refineries in the Midwest, East and Gulf Coast.