Taking Oil Cleanup Gear to Alaska Put California at Risk, Panel States

California’s defense against a major oil spill was seriously weakened by an oil industry decision to rush available cleanup equipment to Alaska to cope with the Exxon Valdez disaster, the California Coastal Commission charged Friday.

The commission and the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which oversees oil and gas development in federal waters, said one of three major vessels, Mr. Clean III, on alert in case of an oil spill in the Santa Barbara area, was dispatched without permission to Prince William Sound on April 9 by Clean Seas, a consortium of 17 major oil and pipeline companies.

It wasn’t until April 20 that a comparably sized ship was on hand to replace Mr. Clean III.

The 181-foot vessel is equipped with 3,000 feet of boom to contain oil spills, two skimmer systems that each pump 750 gallons a minute and a third with a 400-gallons-a-minute pumping capacity, and storage capacity for 1,200 barrels.

So alarmed was the commission by the ship’s redeployment to Alaska that it urged the U.S. Minerals Management Service to immediately forbid any oil and gas exploration and production in the Point Arguello area until the vessel returned to California waters.

The Minerals Management Service did not halt exploration; production in that field is expected to begin in mid-August.

But the MMS did issue an “incident of noncompliance.”

“Previously agreed-to notification procedures were ignored. . . . Disregard for approved procedures is not acceptable and cannot be tolerated in the future,” Thomas W. Dunaway, regional MMS director, said in an April 20 letter to Texaco, one of the oil companies involved in the case.

“Any future incident of this nature will result in more stringent MMS action such as civil penalty and/or shutdown of production and drilling operations,” Dunaway wrote.

“We actually found out through the rumor mill,” said Susan M. Hansch, manager of the Coastal Commission’s energy and ocean resources unit. She added: “We understand why they were sending mutual aid. We just don’t want to protect one area and leave another area without the proper defenses.”

In a letter to the Minerals Management Service, Hansch wrote: “The oil spill response vessel was removed from its location in the Point Arguello offshore area and sent to Alaska without our knowledge or consent. . . .”

Skip Onstad, manager of Clean Seas, denied Friday that the ability to meet an oil spill emergency was ever in question.

He said Mr. Clean III was replaced initially with the Jolly Roger, a smaller ship with less oil storage capacity. Onstad said that the Jolly Roger was not replaced by a larger ship, the Gulf Fleet 69, until the Coastal Commission intervened on April 20.

“We feel we have satisfied their concerns concerning the overall response capability of the (Clean Seas) organization and see no reason why exploration drilling or any other drilling shouldn’t be allowed to continue,” Onstad said.

Onstad said he attempted to notify the MMS on April 8 of the intention to send Mr. Clean III to Alaska but was unable to reach authorities. The ship left the next day, and MMS was notified on April 10. The Coastal Commission did not learn of the redeployment until April 19.

The Alaskan oil spill occurred March 24 when the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound on Bligh Reef, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil.

J. Lisle Reed, regional director of the MMS, said Friday that the ship movement was not as serious as the Coastal Commission believed. “I don’t think you can say it was a serious situation that seriously impaired things,” Reed said. But he added, “We live here in constant memory of the (Jan. 23, 1969) Santa Barbara oil spill, when we weren’t prepared.”