Cleanup Technology Limited : Major Oil Spill Could Find Coast Almost Defenseless

California’s coast--including sensitive estuaries and marine sanctuaries--could be virtually defenseless against a major offshore oil spill, even if the accident were far smaller than last March’s Alaska oil disaster, according to new analyses by federal, state and local authorities.

A Valdez-size spill west of Point Conception would overwhelm the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, according to a computer simulation by the State Lands Commission to be made public today. Within five days, Point Mugu and its fragile Mugu Lagoon estuary would be mired in crude oil and within 10 days, oil would reach Malibu’s beaches.

At the same time, a yet-to-be-released report to Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan from the U.S. Minerals Management Service warns that little could be done to hold back a black tide of oil if a major tanker accident occurred anywhere off the U.S coast.

The extent of a spill’s damage may depend more on weather conditions than on cleanup efforts. Although there is widespread agreement within industry and government that California has the best trained and equipped oil response teams in the nation, the state would be hard-pressed to turn back a spill one-tenth the size of the 11-million-gallon Exxon Valdez disaster because of limitations in cleanup technology.

“There are some large sections of the coast, including San Diego and the North Coast, that do not have any oil spill response capability that could reach even a minor spill, if that should happen,” said Brian Baird, a staffer with the California Coastal Commission.

“The truth is, the oil companies aren’t prepared to handle a spill the size of Valdez or even one-tenth the size of Valdez,” said Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, who serves on the State Lands Commission. The commission oversees offshore oil and gas development in state waters.

These stark assessments are especially disturbing in view of recent disclosures by the U.S. Department of the Interior that there is a 94% chance of a major oil spill off the Southern California coast during the next 30 years, even if ambitious plans to step up outer continental shelf oil and gas lease sales are canceled.

The Minerals Management Service, the State Lands Commission, Santa Barbara County, the American Petroleum Institute, oil companies and their spill-response cooperatives and the Coast Guard have launched reviews of California’s preparedness in the event of an offshore spill from a platform or a tanker accident. Additionally, President Bush’s Outer Continental Shelf Leasing and Development Task Force is looking at the issue.

Major Oil Reservoirs

California’s offshore oil and gas reserves are believed to be among the nation’s last untapped major domestic petroleum reservoirs. Oil production in the Santa Barbara Channel, now at about 80,000 barrels a day, is expected to rise to 500,000 barrels a day over the next decade.

At the same time, there are strong pressures to exploit ocean-floor tracts from Mendocino to San Diego to meet the nation’s growing energy appetite.

A review by The Times of offshore oil rig inspection records, interviews with leading industry and government oil spill experts, as well as evaluations by state and federal agencies, suggest the need for stronger contingency planning, training of personnel, equipment inspection and research and development into more effective oil containment technologies.

- Booms and oil skimmers that are used to encircle and scoop up spreading oil are ineffective in even moderate sea conditions. For much of the California coast, especially in the north and in the Santa Maria basin north of Point Conception where extensive drilling is contemplated, industry and government officials concede that conditions often are too rough for effective booming and skimming.

- Surprise drills by the Minerals Management Service to test oil spill preparedness have found some industry containment equipment inoperable or missing. Inspection records also show that some spill contingency plans for offshore oil and gas platforms and drilling ships are out of date. Also, oil platform crews are sometimes unprepared to deal with even a small spill because of turnover of personnel. During a drill last September in the Santa Barbara Channel, for example, a three-man crew snagged a boom on a buoy, tangled anchor rope on a boat’s propellers and could not keep the boom in place to contain a spill.

- The state bars oil companies from using chemical dispersants without prior approval. Oil companies complain that the approval process jeopardizes prompt spill cleanup. Dispersants can break up oil before it reaches shore, but they are controversial because they are toxic and their effectiveness has been spotty.

- Cleanup responses have been delayed because an oil or tanker company is not a member of an industry cooperative formed to handle spills, according to a study by Santa Barbara County.

- Research and development for more efficient and reliable oil spill cleanup technology has been hampered by federal budget cuts. The Coast Guard has abandoned research and development, leaving such efforts to the Minerals Management Service.

- Plans to establish permanent rescue centers for birds and marine mammals injured by spills have not been carried out, despite discussion within federal and state agencies and pleas by environmentalists.

There are three levels of oil spill responses, similar to a fire department’s response to a blaze. Spills of less than 10 barrels from an offshore oil platform can usually be contained and cleaned up by personnel on the platform. For larger spills, help is dispatched by oil spill response teams financed by a consortium of oil companies. For still larger spills, the Coast Guard’s regional strike teams are summoned.

One industry response group, Clean Seas, has a $4-million annual budget financed by 17 oil companies and maintains three major oil-spill response ships on round-the-clock alert equipped with booms, skimmers and other equipment. Clean Seas covers the coast from Cape San Martin on the north to Point Dume on the south, including the Channel Islands.

“I think the readiness of the Pacific Regions should be the envy of any oil-producing area of the world,” said Rishi Tyagi, Minerals Management Service district supervisor in Ventura.

But while California appears far better prepared than Alaska to cope with an oil spill, there still are serious doubts about how well cleanup equipment would work in the seas off California’s coast.

A Coastal Commission analysis indicates that within the Santa Barbara Channel, where weather conditions are more favorable to oil recovery operations than in the open ocean, optimal cleanup conditions exist only a little more than half the time, and only 44% of the time during winter months. In the open sea off the California coast, the Coast Guard reports, swells are greater than six feet 60% of the time or more. Booms and skimmers begin to lose effectiveness in seas larger than 2 1/2 feet. “Wind, wave and visibility conditions exceed equipment capabilities in the Clean Seas area of responsibility a significant part of the time,” the commission study said.

‘Can’t Fight Mother Nature’

“There’s a lot of luck involved. A lot of skill and a lot of preparation. But you can’t fight Mother Nature,” said Skip Onstead, Clean Seas manager.

“I guess the biggest fear I have is, for some reason, whatever it might be . . . that we’re not able to do the job that we have advertised we’re going to,” Onstead said. “I know that I have the best people, the most highly trained people probably any place in the world . . . but there’s still ways for everything to go wrong. . . . It’s one thing to do it in drills but it’s another thing to do it in the real world. It’s hard to predict how its going to really work.”

Currents that flow in and out of sensitive coastal estuaries such as Mugu Lagoon make it extremely difficult to erect booms to keep a tide of oil from penetrating the stopping-off areas along the Pacific flyway for a number of endangered birds.

Clean Seas’ advancing skimmers lose significant amounts of oil if they travel faster than 1 m.p.h. In a large spill, a slow recovery rate heightens chances that spilled oil will hit beaches.

But if the effectiveness of booms and skimmers is in doubt, so is the effectiveness of chemical dispersants, which are solvents or other chemical agents used to break up oil into droplets that are spread by ocean currents.

If a large oil slick can be broken up before it reaches shore, damage to sensitive coastal habitats can be avoided or minimized.

But the Minerals Management Service’s report to Lujan concluded that dispersants are “generally ineffective” in the open ocean, even though new formulas have made them far less toxic than those available a decade ago.

In its computer-simulated Southern California oil spill scenario, the State Lands Commission chose the site of the 1987 collision of the Pac Baroness and Atlantic Wing, about 11 miles west of Point Conception, as the location of a Valdez-sized accident. Neither ship was an oil tanker.

But officials wanted to make their computer projection as realistic as possible. Employing a Dutch computer model, technicians tracked the spill’s path using wind and ocean currents for a typical day in May. The model showed oil swamping the Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary, washing ashore at Oxnard and Point Mugu and killing tens of thousands of birds.

The worst California accident came in 1969 when Unocal’s Platform A off Santa Barbara erupted. About 77,000 barrels of crude washed ashore along the Santa Barbara coast and in the Channel Islands, killing birds and marine life. The incident touched off a nationwide environmental movement.

The Minerals Management Service report noted that spills from an offshore oil platform would be far less severe than a sudden and massive release from a stricken tanker. There is ample reason to be concerned about such a tanker accident off the California coast.

On Sept. 27, 1987, the car carrier Atlantic Wing collided with the Liberian-registered bulk cargo carrier Pac Baroness. Both ships had working radar and were monitoring each other’s approach. The Pac Baroness went down in 1,500 feet of water within three miles of Platform Hermosoa, carrying 23,000 metric tons of copper, iron and sulfur ore and 8,000 to 9,000 barrels of bunker fuel. During the first few days following the spill, the Coast Guard estimated that 75 barrels, or 3,150 gallons, had been recovered by booms and skimmers.

A Coastal Commission report said, “Oil cleanup was frequently made difficult by poor visibility and rough sea conditions.”

The collision occurred off Point Arguello in the Santa Maria Basin, where additional oil and gas platforms are likely to be erected.

In the summer of 1986, a foreign-registered ship came within a quarter of a mile of Texaco’s Platform Harvest in the Santa Barbara channel. Language difficulties prevented the platform’s radio operator from warding off the ship. Clean Seas sent out a boat to warn the approaching ship. A report by Santa Barbara County found that the Coast Guard has records of six incidents in which large ships approached “too close” to offshore oil platforms during the last four years.

In January, 1988, the tanker Arco Juneau hit the Carquinez Bridge in San Francisco Bay. A 200-foot hole was ripped open in its empty hold.

And last month, the supertanker Overseas Juneau, replacing the Exxon Valdez, which had caused the major spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, hit the Richmond Chevron refinery pier while carrying 17 million gallons of crude, destroying a 100-foot section of concrete catwalk. It narrowly missed hitting a pipeline used to transfer oil from ship to shore.

OIL SPILL RESPONSE PLAN

Oil companies have organized five consortiums in California to cope with a medium or larger oil spill. Each cooperative employs specially trained crews and maintains stockpiles of booms, skimmers, chemical dispersants and other equipment that can be quickly dispatched. Clean Seas responds to spills between Cape San Martin on the north to Point Dume on the south. Clean Coastal Waters operates largely within Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors. Clean Bays performs a similar function in San Francisco Bay. The 11-million-gallon oil spill from the Exxon Valdez covered 9,600 square miles. The spill--as it appeared after 16 days of drifting--is shown here superimposed along the California coast.

The * denotes boats specially outfitted to handle oil spills. Gear includes pumps that can suck up between 400 and 600 gallons of oiled-fouled seawater per minute, oil-water separators, and oil storage tanks that can hold 1,200 to 1,500 barrels. The boats also act as communications command posts. The boats require about one hour to travel 12 miles and are stationed strategically to reduce respone times.