Exxon Platform Launched Despite Protests

The 80-ton base for a new Exxon offshore oil-drilling platform was launched Saturday morning despite opposition from environmental groups.

Exxon spokesman Tony Malbrough said the launch took place about 9:15 a.m. with “no problems.”

U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer had issued an order Friday restraining Greenpeace, Get Oil Out and any other unauthorized individuals from going near the platform’s site eight miles off the coast from Santa Barbara.

On Friday, two Greenpeace boats darted in and out of a 500-yard safety zone set up around the site by the Coast Guard. Activists said the tactic forced Exxon to delay its launch by a day, but the oil company blamed the setback on equipment problems.

The Coast Guard extended the safety zone to 3,000 yards Saturday and sent two 82-foot cutters to police it, Petty Officer Elizabeth Fleming said. No boats were sighted in the area, she said.

The steel structure is 1,100 feet long, weighs 80 tons, and will extend from the ocean floor to 15 feet above the surface. Towed on a barge from South Korea, where it was built, it will become the foundation of Exxon’s Heritage platform, part of a $2.5-billion expansion of the company’s Santa Inez oil-drilling project.

The foundation will float horizontally for a day or two while Exxon workers flood its air-filled legs to upend it and drive pilings into the sea floor to secure it in 1,075-foot-deep water.

Heerema Marine Contractors sought the restraining order, court papers said, because boats had been seen circling the platform site earlier in the week and because a vessel carrying a dozen people and a Greenpeace banner had gone there Friday.

Carole Ann Cole, a spokeswoman for Get Oil Out, a group opposed to offshore drilling, said the activists initially planned to board the barge but decided it was too risky after learning Exxon had cut most of the cables securing the platform.

“We do feel they (drilling foes) were very much a success because without endangering lives, they were able to temporarily halt the project,” Cole said.

“Obviously, we’d like to delay it by days or years,” she said. “You could call it (Friday’s action) symbolic. We brought attention to what is going on out there.”