State Adopts Tougher Safety Rules for Offshore Oil Tanker Terminals : Spills: The aim is to protect the shores from accidents like those recently at Huntington Beach and El Segundo.

In an effort to prevent such oil shipping accidents as those that have recently marred the coastlines of Huntington Beach and El Segundo, the State Lands Commission on Wednesday announced tougher safety measures for the state’s 21 offshore tanker terminals.

However, the new rules will have little effect on the Huntington Beach terminal, which is already operating under more stringent restrictions imposed after the oil spill of Feb. 7, 1990.

Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, the commission’s chairman, called the new precautions “an immediate and substantial step” that will improve safety at marine terminals used for loading and unloading crude oil. The rules were announced at a news conference in Los Angeles.

The terminal operators have been told to conduct annual depth surveys, use tugboats to guide tankers, hire a second mooring master to be present during all loading and unloading, use divers to check undersea hoses in pipelines and install vacuums in pipelines to stop spills if a rupture occurs. Additional depth surveys may be required by the commission after major storms or earthquakes.

California moved to investigate tighter safety measures mostly because of the 1990 spill off Huntington Beach, which occurred when a tanker struck bottom and was ruptured by its own anchor. About 15 miles of coastline was soiled by the spill.

On March 16, 27,000 gallons spilled from a Chevron Corp. pipeline in El Segundo that was ripped open by an oil tanker’s anchor, fouling Santa Monica Bay beaches.

“Up and down the coast, our safety measures bring a cost-effective measure of environmental security,” said state Controller Gray Davis, another commission member.

The Huntington Beach terminal of Golden West Refining of Santa Fe Springs has been operating under 10 special requirements. They include annual depth surveys, tugboat assistance and a minimum 6-foot clearance between the ocean floor and a tanker. The Coast Guard imposed the new restrictions last spring after a two-month investigation into the cause of the accident.

The tanker American Trader hit bottom off Huntington Beach in part because the tanker crew and mooring master thought the ocean was many feet deeper than it actually was. The ocean floor around the terminal had not been surveyed by Golden West for almost 10 years.

The only additional changes that Golden West will make is adding a second mooring master and installing the vacuums in lines.

“The operators there are already implementing many of these guidelines and have agreed to implement the rest,” said Edd Fong, spokesman for Davis’ office.

Environmental groups commended the commission for taking what one activist called “a good first step.”

“There’s more to be done, but the State Lands Commission is doing a good job,” said Ann Notthoff, a senior planner in the coastal program of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

She said the new measures “all sound good,” and would have helped prevent the Huntington Beach spill if they had been in place at the time. But she added that other precautions, such as use of plastic booms around tankers, should also be considered because ocean terminals like those off Huntington Beach and El Segundo are “inherently fraught with many more problems” than terminals in ports such as Long Beach or San Francisco.

Offshore terminals are used by oil tankers at Oxnard, Carlsbad, Monterey Bay, Santa Barbara and Estero Bay.

The commission also announced Wednesday that Chevron Corp. has agreed to shut down one of three berths in El Segundo, the site of the March spill in Santa Monica Bay. The commission said the proximity of the berth to another berth was a major contributing factor to the spill, which dirtied beaches mostly around Malibu.