HUNTINGTON BEACH : City, Oil Company Settle on Payment

The City Council this week agreed to accept a $431,653 payment from British Petroleum to cover the city’s costs for emergency response and cleanup related to the Feb. 6 oil spill.

The agreement, in which British Petroleum acknowledges no responsibility for the disaster, is a full settlement of the city’s claim against the oil company. However, city officials will continue “vigorously pursuing” other indirect costs and reparations for damage the disaster caused to the coastal environment and wildlife, City Atty. Gail C. Hutton said.

That potential claim, which may seek millions of dollars in damages from the oil company and others blamed for the spill, is months away from being filed, she said.

Officials and legal consultants are still working on spill impact studies about the marine and beach environment needed to prepare the claim, Hutton said.

The city is preparing that claim, which Hutton said will likely be filed as a lawsuit, in a joint effort with the state, the U.S. attorney general’s office and the cities of Laguna Beach and Newport Beach.

Beaches in those coastal cities were also blackened by the disaster, in which the tanker American Trader spewed almost 400,000 gallons of crude into the ocean. The vessel apparently punctured its hull on its own anchor while mooring about 1 1/2 miles off the Huntington Beach shore.

British Petroleum now owes the city $181,653, having previously paid Huntington Beach $250,000 for cleanup and emergency response costs.

The payment to which the council agreed is about 20% less than the $526,959 the city had sought. Most of the unpaid difference consists of city overhead costs, which the firm refused to repay. Hutton said it was unlikely that the city would have been awarded those costs had it sued for repayment.

City Administrator Michael T. Uberuaga said the tallied overhead charges were “not direct consequences” of the oil spill but were routine operational costs that “we would have had anyway.”

“The costs we’re recovering are all the direct costs” for the response and cleanup, he said.

In approving the agreement, council members emphasized that the city’s claim for environmental damages and other indirect costs should target not only British Petroleum but also Golden West Refineries, which runs the offshore mooring facilities, and any other parties believed to share responsibility for the disaster.

Councilman John Erskine also reiterated the council’s previous calls to rescind the city’s lease agreement with Golden West and end oil transportation off the city’s coast.