Safety Adviser for Mobil May Not Be Named Until January

A safety adviser to oversee the Mobil Oil Corp. refinery in Torrance may not be named until January because the search is taking longer than expected, city officials said Wednesday.

The Torrance City Council was expected to recommend its nominee for the court-supervised post by today. But council members decided Tuesday to extend the selection process.

“It’s a very difficult decision. That’s why it’s taking some time,” Mayor Katy Geissert said.

The post is being created as part of a pretrial settlement reached last month in the public nuisance lawsuit filed against Mobil by the city. The adviser will have the power to oversee the refinery for the next seven years.

“This is the most important part of the agreement, this safety adviser,” Councilman Tim Mock said.

The settlement, announced Oct. 18, calls for the city and Mobil to exchange names of potential advisers by today, 30 days after the agreement was processed. If the city and Mobil cannot agree on someone, the judge overseeing the settlement is to choose the adviser.

Geissert said the council had narrowed its list of candidates to two firms by Tuesday evening but that council members wanted more time to make a decision. Neither she nor other council members would disclose the names of those firms.

Mobil’s lawyers agreed to give the city more time, said City Atty. Kenneth L. Nelson. The timetable now calls for the city and Mobil to exchange names of candidates on or before Dec. 19.

Several council members said Mobil has indicated that it is leaning toward Westinghouse Electric Corp. for the job.

Mobil Refinery Manager Joel H. Maness, in an interview Tuesday, would neither confirm nor deny that the oil company will recommend Westinghouse.

“I don’t think it would be appropriate for us to discuss any of the candidates we’ve interviewed,” Maness said.

However, John Fasnacht, an engineering manager for Westinghouse, said Wednesday that the firm has discussed the safety adviser job with Mobil officials and attorneys for the city. Fasnacht said he did not know what other firms may be under consideration.

It remains unclear when the identity of the safety adviser will be made public.

Maness said he does not think either the city or Mobil should release names of firms under consideration for the job until they agree on a joint recommendation.

“I’d be amazed if the city is going to have any public announcement” of its nominee, Maness said. The announcement should wait until the city and Mobil have agreed on an adviser, “rather than having public announcements made on intermediate steps,” Maness said.

But Ralph Nutter, a lawyer representing the city, said last week he believes the council should vote publicly on its choice of a safety adviser. Nelson said Tuesday that some sort of public announcement of the city’s nominee would be made.

The safety adviser is seen as an important element in the wide-ranging settlement of the lawsuit, brought against Mobil by the city in April, 1989. The suit, which followed a series of accidents and deaths at the sprawling refinery, sought to have the plant declared a public nuisance and to obtain authority for the city to regulate it.

Lawyers for the city and Mobil agreed on a settlement only a few weeks before the trial of the suit was due to start Nov. 5.

In the settlement, Mobil agreed to phase out its use of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid by the end of 1997 unless it can develop a safer form of the chemical by the end of 1994. The safety adviser will have to approve the modified use of the acid.

The adviser will also be empowered to investigate a wide range of issues at the refinery, including fire-fighting procedures, seismic safety and the handling of hazardous materials.

The adviser is expected to be an engineering consulting firm. The choice will not be easy, since the adviser should be knowledgeable about the oil industry without having strong ties to Mobil, city officials and environmentalists have said.

“Everyone is learning right now,” said Councilman Dan Walker. “We’re learning a great deal about how this selection process works, and the questions to ask, and how to get the information.”

Walker compared the city’s relationship with the safety adviser to a seven-year marriage. “It’s got to be done incredibly carefully,” he said.

The safety adviser will make reports on the refinery every three months.

It remains unclear if those reports will be made public. Mobil spokesman James A. Carbonetti said the company would oppose release of any proprietary portions of the reports. He said Mobil would want to discuss with the city what constitutes proprietary information.

Mobil plans to conduct periodic public updates to describe what it is doing to conform with the adviser’s recommendations, Carbonetti said.

“It won’t be a deep, dark secret,” he said. “We will be conducting press briefings on this.”

Times staff writer Janet Rae-Dupree contributed to this story.