Lease Sale Held Almost Certain to Lead to Spill

Proposed new oil drilling off the coast of Southern California would appreciably increase the chance of a large oil spill in the region and make a major spill almost certain within the next 31 years, according to a new assessment by the Department of the Interior.

The study, the government’s first official estimate of oil spill risks from the sale of new Southern California leases, found 1 chance in 7 of a “large” spill of 1,000 barrels or more resulting from the proposed federal Lease Sale 95, which would include sites off the coast from Ventura County south to the Mexican border.

That prospect would make all but certain a large spill resulting from Lease Sale 95 or continuing Southern California offshore oil drilling under existing federal and state leases, according to the assessment. This calculation includes the possibility of a spill not only from the drilling but also from associated tanker traffic.

The risk assessment, prepared for the White House task force weighing whether the Southern California lease sale should proceed, was presented to the panel’s working group last week. A briefing paper was made available to The Times on Tuesday, and its conclusions were confirmed by Administration officials.

The report, assembled by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, did not attempt to estimate the odds of a major oil spill from existing offshore operations, if Lease Sale 95 is not approved.

But it contended that the proposed drilling in the Lease Sale 95 area would be far less likely to cause a spill than other continuing oil-related activity off the Southern California shore.

For example, the report showed that new offshore drilling would account for just 4% of the overall risk to Southern California of a “very large” spill of 10,000 barrels or more. In contrast, tankers carrying Alaskan oil make up nearly half of that risk.

The prospect that new drilling would result in such a “very large” spill was put at 1 in 20. Approval of such activity would raise to 94% the overall likelihood that the region would suffer such a 10,000-barrel-plus spill in the next three decades, the report said.

By comparison, 77,000 barrels of oil were spilled in the Santa Barbara platform blowout of 1969. About 240,000 barrels were spilled this spring in Prince William Sound when the Exxon Valdez ran aground on a submerged reef.

Urge Cancellation

Leading opponents of offshore drilling pointed to the projected increased risk as further reason that the proposed lease sale off Southern California--and other plans for drilling off the coasts of Central and Northern California--ought to be canceled.

At the same time, some argued that the prospect of a drilling-related spill is far greater than the Interior Department contended, and accused the Bush Administration of seeking to play down the risk.

“They’re doctoring numbers again,” charged Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), noting that the assessment formula used by Interior’s Minerals Management Service had previously been criticized as biased by other government agencies.

“Given the fact that they are trying to come to the most benign possible conclusion, even that conclusion should raise concerns,” Levine said.

The disclosure of the Interior Department risk assessment came as the task force was preparing to convene in Los Angeles today to hear testimony about the lease sale from public officials and private citizens.

The risk analysis by the Minerals Management Service was to have been included in an Interior Department study assessing the environmental impact of the proposed lease sale. Its publication was postponed until after the White House task force completes its deliberations at the end of the year, Interior officials said.

The task force, headed by Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr., has been ordered to examine whether the offshore drilling plans should be modified or canceled out of concern that such activity might cause significant environmental harm.

Estimates of “oil spill occurrence risk” for Southern California were presented to the task force in bar graph form, with the prospect that Lease Sale 95 might result in a large oil spill in coming decades portrayed as hovering near 15%.

However, Robert P. LaBelle, a senior MMS official involved in drafting the report, cautioned that the statistics should not be interpreted as “predictions of future spill events.”

“These are estimates to be given in an environmental analysis,” LaBelle said.

Estimates by the MMS of the oil spill risk posed by Lease Sale 95 were based initially on the assumption that the new drilling would yield 230 million barrels of oil that would have to be produced and transported to shore over the next 31 years.

Other assessments took account of U.S. experience, which has shown that tankers and pipelines pose a considerably greater risk of spills than do oil platforms.