Activist Groups Fight Mobil’s Pipeline Plan : Energy: The oil company wants to replace a leaky pipeline. Opponents question the safety and need of the proposal.

Mobil Oil’s plan to replace 75 miles of its aging and leaky pipeline with a larger pipeline that would run through the Westside faced opposition from environmental and neighborhood activists at a meeting to provide input for an environmental impact report.

During the second day of the meeting, which concluded Wednesday, officials from public agencies and some of the six cities the pipeline will cross questioned details of the project, including plans to handle traffic disruption, emissions from pipe coatings and emergencies. Officials seemed to have no reservations about the overall wisdom of the project.

The existing pipeline carries 2.6 million gallons of heated crude oil from San Joaquin Valley oil fields through Santa Clarita, the San Fernando Valley, the Westside and the South Bay to the oil company’s refinery in Torrance.

Mobil proposed the project after state fire safety officials voiced concern about corrosion in the pipeline. The officials cited a series of pipeline accidents, including a spill of 132,000 gallons of oil that poured onto Ventura Boulevard in Encino on Sept. 10, 1988, and a spill of 126,000 gallons of oil and water on Sept. 27, 1988, in Sherman Oaks, a few hundred yards from the earlier spill.

Mobil spent about $3 million to clean up the messes. On Nov. 30, Mobil, which was fined $85,000 in August for violating state water quality regulations, pleaded no contest to criminal misdemeanor charges arising from the pipeline ruptures. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Jan. 4.

At the meeting held in Westwood, Mobil pipeline coordinator Bill Ham made no direct mention of the spills, referring only to “operational problems” with the existing line, whose segments range in age from 2 to 50 years old and in diameter from 10 to 16 inches.

The replacement pipeline, which would have a uniform diameter of 16 inches, would enable Mobil to pump 95,000 barrels of crude oil a day through the pipeline, compared to the 63,000 barrels a day the existing line takes. A barrel is 42 gallons.

Ham said the new line would be safer because its uniform diameter would permit the use of a device that moves through the pipeline to measure wall thickness. In addition, Ham said, the new pipeline would be coated with an epoxy compound that resists corrosion.

Susan Nelson, a representative of the Coalition in Defense of Residential Environments, said new projects supporting the use of petroleum, such as the pipeline, should not be approved, and existing facilities should be eliminated.

“We’d like to see a new society, (with) non-petroleum-based energy,” she said. “The air in this basin is one of the worst in the country.” She added, “If there was a vote, we would vote out the refineries. They don’t belong there anymore. They are outdated, outmoded.”

Richard Adams, co-chairman of the Coalition Against the Pipeline and Pollution, argued that the larger size of the pipeline and new routes along some segments mean the project should be considered as a new pipeline, which would have to receive Los Angeles City Council approval.

Ken Cude of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, said, however, that the project is considered a replacement or addition to an existing pipeline, which means the Los Angeles Transportation Board may approve the project without City Council involvement.

Adams and most of the opponents were active in the successful fight to block the Angeles pipeline, a proposal by a consortium of oil companies, not including Mobil, to bring San Joaquin Valley crude to refineries in Los Angeles County.

When the activists learned earlier this year that the Los Angeles Department of Transportation intended to approve the project without an environmental impact report, their opposition led public officials to demand the Transportation Department produce the environmental report. A draft version is expected by Feb. 7.