Gray Davis Warns Bush on Oil Drilling

A state report that says the amount of oil recovered from the Feb. 7 tanker spill off Huntington Beach was vastly overstated should send a message to President Bush not to permit any new oil drilling off the Southern California coast, a top state official said Tuesday.

State Controller Gray Davis, chairman of the State Lands Commission, said in Los Angeles that “more oil drilling means more oil tankers and, Mr. Bush, we don’t need more tankers. . . . The Huntington Beach accident was enough.”

Davis issued his plea as the commission released a report prepared by a Norwegian firm assessing cleanup efforts after the 399,000-gallon spill. The oil leaked out of the crippled freighter American Trader at a marine terminal about 1.3 miles southwest of Huntington Beach.

Davis, a Democrat and a leading environmentalist, used the report to lobby against opening large tracts of coastal Southern California, including Orange County, to oil and gas exploration and drilling.

Bush is expected to announce his recommendations for future oil drilling off California, Florida and the Gulf Coast very soon.

Most local, state and federal officials representing Orange County oppose more oil drilling along the coast.

“Coastal waters from Palos Verdes to San Diego contain some very fertile oil fields, and if President Bush designates any area of Southern California for drilling, he’ll probably zero in on Orange and San Diego counties,” predicted Robert H. Sulnick, executive director of the Santa Monica-based American Oceans Campaign.

More drilling off the coast, Davis said, only increases chances of another accident similar to the American Trader spill that cost $30 million to clean up, killed or injured more than 750 birds, including several of an endangered species, and closed miles of shoreline for more than a month.

While generally praising British Petroleum’s cleanup efforts, the State Lands Commission report said the amount of spilled oil that was actually recovered from the ocean was far less than company estimates. The state report said only 21% of the oil, or roughly 83,748 gallons, was picked up by skimming vessels. Earlier estimates offered by the U.S. Coast Guard put the recovery rate at 37%, or 147,630 gallons.

The difference could mean that American Trading Transportation Co., owners and operators of the 811-foot, U.S.-registered tanker, may eventually pay more than $8 million in fines--rather than $5 million if 37% of the oil had been recovered. British Petroleum owned the oil on the tanker and coordinated the cleanup, but Davis said American Trading & Transportation Co. will likely be held liable for the fines because it owned the tanker.

No matter how much oil was recovered, Davis said, the spill underscored how difficult, even under the best conditions, it is to recapture even a small amount of oil.

“Even with good weather and a fairly good response, we were able to get only 20% of the oil,” he said, adding that “you can never put the toxic genie back in the bottle. . . . At best you can only clean up a small percentage of the oil.”

The report by Oceanor, a consulting firm in Trondheim, Norway, is a review of how industry, government and private response teams performed in the days following the February mishap when, at low tide, the American Trader sat on its own anchor and began oozing crude oil at the Huntington Beach marine terminal. The terminal is owned by Golden West Refining, a Santa Fe Springs-based company.