Mays Urges Inquiry Into Coastal Wells

As workmen mopped up the remains Wednesday of a small oil spill on Bolsa Chica State Beach, Mayor Thomas J. Mays said he is writing the State Lands Commission and urging it to investigate the safety of all oil drilling off the California coast.

About 168 gallons of oil washed up Tuesday on a mile of state shoreline, prompting authorities to close the beach for a brief period while work crews cleaned up the mess.

Although the episode was relatively minor, contrasted with the February spill involving the tanker American Trader, which punctured its own hull off Huntington Beach and leaked nearly 300,000 gallons of crude oil into the sea, Mays said it points to a need for studies of oil platform safety.

“I am asking the commission for a re-evaluation of all the existing policing and safety procedures on oil platforms,” Mays said. “The Coast Guard made a thorough investigation (of offshore oil tanker terminals) after the American Trader spill here, and I think the State Lands Commission needs to do the same thing with oil platforms. Something needs to be done now.”

The State Lands Commission is a three-member agency that controls all California tidelands from the beaches to three miles out to sea, which gives it stewardship over most offshore oil platforms, including two off Huntington Beach.

Investigators said the cause and source of the spill had not been determined Wednesday, but Mays speculated that the crude may have come from one of the two oil platforms off the city.

Coast Guard officials directed final mop-up efforts Wednesday morning on the oil, which was first spotted on the beach about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday on the south end of the three-mile state beach.

The beach was closed Tuesday night as a 20-person crew removed oil-stained sand. Portions of the beach were reopened Wednesday, state park officials reported.

Officials said the only known harm to wildlife was to a bird, which had been covered with the oil and was being treated Wednesday morning.

“It’s considered a minor spill, although it’s kind of unfortunate,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Tim Rowe said.

Coast Guard officials took samples of the oil from the beach to determine its origin. The samples are being sent to a Coast Guard lab in Connecticut, and test results are expected within two weeks.

Rowe said investigators believe the oil leaked from one of two drilling platforms in the vicinity. One platform, Eva, is operated by Unocal Corp., while the other, Emmy, is run by Shell Oil Co.

Unocal assumed responsibility for the cleanup, but not the spill, and hired a Long Beach-based oil cleanup contractor to remove the oil.

Barry Lane, a Unocal spokesman in Los Angeles, said his company volunteered for the cleanup only because “all of the oil companies work together” when there is a spill like this. But Lane added that the oil could have come from anywhere--a passing ship, even from a hidden deposit on the ocean bottom.

The Unocal rig, Lane said, is south of Bolsa Chica State Beach and in a downstream current that would make it an unlikely source of the oil.

Bill Gibson, a spokesman for Shell Oil, said Wednesday that its offshore rig has been shut down since last fall. He said that two caretakers on the platform spotted a light oil sheen Monday night northwest of Platform Emmy. Those Shell workers reported the oil slick to the Coast Guard, Gibson said.

Gibson said Shell officials subsequently investigated “and there was no indication that the oil was ours. . . . We feel confident it did not come from any of our operations.”