Incident Fuels the Drive for Double Hulls

Alaskan crude oil was still oozing from the ruptured belly of the tanker American Trader on Thursday when Arthur McKenzie, president of the Tanker Advisory Center in New York, declared:

“This is it. This is the icing on the cake. Now we’re going to get double bottoms.”

To advocates of the controversial proposal that all tankers operating in U.S. ports be required to have double hulls or double bottoms, there was a silver lining beneath the iridescent sheen spreading across the waters off Huntington Beach. It reflected what McKenzie sees as “irresistible pressure” building on federal and state officials to make tankers safer.

“If the American Trader had had a double bottom or hull, this accident wouldn’t have spilled any oil; it wouldn’t have made a blip in the news,” McKenzie, a former Exxon official who supports double-bottom requirements, said.

Legislation mandating the costly conversion, given unprecedented momentum by the disastrous grounding of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound last spring, has been hung up by political uncertainty in the face of industry reluctance or outright opposition.

But on Thursday, repercussions from the American Trader oil spill spread rapidly through the offices of political leaders and policy makers, giving added impetus to a variety of legislative proposals regulating not only tankers, but oil spill response and offshore exploration as well.

And there were signs that the industry may have altered its response to oil cleanup and public demands for information about spills since the Valdez disaster.

In Valdez, critics had complained that 72 hours of favorable weather conditions were squandered in a slow response to that massive spill.

But in Huntington Beach, containment equipment and cleanup crews took quick advantage of favorable weather conditions to delay the 300,000-gallon spill from coming ashore for more than 24 hours.

Within hours of the spill, British Petroleum--owners of the oil cargo and partners in the cleanup effort with American Trading Transportation Co., the ship’s New York owner--had assembled its own crisis management team and called in outside contractors.

Peter Necarsulmer of the PBN Co., a San Francisco public relations firm, told The Times: “Certainly one of the major lessons of Valdez is to have contingency plans in place and to get people on the ground quickly and get the lines of communication open. They’ve got their whole corporate emergency response team here.”

Charles Webster, British Petroleum’s manager of crisis management who flew in from Cleveland, said:

“There’s a general corporate recognition that if you’re dealing with materials that can cause problems or have a potential to have an impact on society that you better be prepared to (respond) fast and do it right.”

The Huntington Beach spill also has directed attention at an unfulfilled petroleum industry promise to establish five regional oil spill response centers, including one near Long Beach--a $250-million plan that has fallen far behind schedule.

The centers, proposed by 14 major oil companies June 20 in the aftermath of the Valdez disaster, were to have been operational by this summer. They are to fill an acknowledged void in the industry’s ability to cope with a major offshore oil spill.

But industry officials said Thursday that they don’t expect the response centers to be ready until September, 1991, if then.

“It’s going to be a dicey thing . . . about getting it done in 18 months,” said Stephen Duca of Petroleum Industry Response Organization Implementation Inc., an organization created by the American Petroleum Institute to put the proposal into effect. It is headed by retired Coast Guard Adm. John Costello.

Since the much-publicized June announcement, cost estimates have risen to $400 million.

Meanwhile, in Sacramento and Washington on Thursday, there were signs that even staunch political allies of the oil industry were moving away to support industry-opposed measures regulating tankers and oil transportation.

Assemblyman Ted Lempert (D-San Mateo) said the spill dramatically underscored the need for the state to enact more stringent regulations for tankers. He is proposing legislation that would impose a 50-cent fee on each barrel of oil shipped to California. The fee would establish a $500-million oil response fund and dramatically beef up the office of oil response within the Fish and Game Department.

California Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, who co-sponsored the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act now pending in the Assembly, said the spill could be a “blessing in disguise” if its damage is minimal.

“This is a wake-up call,” he said. “It could have been much worse.”

The measure being carried by Lempert also would require tankers in California waters to be double-hulled and would levy a $10-per-gallon fine for any oil spills and a $30-per-gallon fine for spills caused by willful misconduct or negligence.

In Washington, pressure mounted on Senate leaders to accept a House amendment to oil spill legislation that would require double hulls or double bottoms almost immediately on all new tankers and a retrofitting program on all existing tankers. The program would result in a complete fleet of double-hulled tankers within 15 years.

Rep. Dean A. Gallo (R-N.J.), author of the amendment, said the Huntington Beach spill “would never have happened” with his proposal in force.

Opponents include the shipping industry, which objects to the cost of double hulls; maritime unions, which are concerned about possible job losses from dry-docking, and the Coast Guard, which is worried about the potential for explosions in double-hulled ships.

However, support for double-hull construction emerged Thursday even from legislators who generally side with the oil industry and who favor opening the California coast to offshore drilling.

Orange County Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), whose inland district lies within a dozen miles of the spill, is one of the most vocal advocates of offshore drilling in Congress. Yet, he supported the Gallo amendment.

“For the foreseeable future, we’re going to depend on oil and natural gas for the lion’s share of our energy, and that means (oil) is going to move in tankers. . . . They should have double bottoms,” Dannemeyer said.

“It costs more, but it’s part of the price we pay to live in a world that we want to make as environmentally clean as we can,” he said.

The Huntington Beach spill “will be galvanizing in California, and California is a pretty big state,” said Bill Woodward, a staff member on the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, which handled the oil spill legislation.

“I think (the spill) will make the difference between a lukewarm provision (on double hulls) and a really strong provision,” Woodward said.

California GOP Sen. Pete Wilson not only supports the double hull legislation but said the Huntington Beach spill shows that a moratorium on offshore drilling is necessary. He said the American Trader spill was a “tiny fraction” of what would be released by an oil rig blow-out.

But the National Ocean Industries Assn., an oil industry trade group, said that outer continental shelf oil development will reduce the numbers of tankers hauling oil in the United States.

“Additional offshore production will actually decrease the amount of tanker traffic off America’s coasts. For every barrel of oil produced domestically, one less barrel of imported oil will be transported into the country, nearly all of which is transported by tankers,” the organization said in a prepared statement.

At least one key Republican was considering whether to support tougher state legislation that includes double-hull requirements. A spokesman for state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), whose district includes the spill area, said Bergeson may even become a co-author of the legislation with partisan rival McCarthy.

Bergeson is running for the GOP lieutenant governor nomination and could oppose McCarthy in the general election.

“In issues like this, the sponsor doesn’t matter,” an aide said. “The California coastline is above political rhetoric and politics.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard has not endorsed mandatory double hulls. But on an inspection of the spill site Thursday, Coast Guard Commandant Paul A. Yost Jr. acknowledged that the American Trader “probably . . . would have lost less oil if (it) would have had a double bottom.”