Oil Firms Plan Pipeline From Santa Barbara : Energy: A 170-mile conduit would bring 130,000 barrels a day from offshore platforms to refineries.

Five years after a similar plan foundered amid public opposition, oil companies are sponsoring a proposal to build a 170-mile crude oil pipeline linking offshore platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel to two South Bay refineries.

Public hearings are scheduled to begin next month on the $200-million conduit, which would carry up to 130,000 barrels a day through the heart of Los Angeles County.

The project is being proposed by Pacific Pipeline, a sister company of Southern Pacific railroad. The bulk of the $2.5 million in initial funding has been provided by a group of oil companies including Chevron, Exxon and Texaco, with the rest coming from Pacific Pipeline.

The plan calls for the construction of a line from Santa Barbara County to Chevron’s El Segundo refinery, a Texaco refinery and a GATX Corp. terminal in Wilmington.

Because the pipeline would be buried on Southern Pacific rights of way along more than 90% of its route, proponents say the plan may fare better politically than the ill-fated Angeles pipeline project, an earlier attempt to deliver offshore crude from Santa Barbara County to the Los Angeles Basin.

The Angeles project, which would have involved burying large portions of the proposed line beneath densely populated streets, died in 1987 after drawing opposition from Los Angeles and other cities along the route.

“The Angeles pipeline would have bulled its way through L.A. County,” said Norman Rooney, president of Pacific Pipeline System. “When our pipeline is built, people won’t even know we’ve gone through.”

But the Pacific project is being scrutinized by environmental organizations and Coalition Against the Pipeline (CAP), a citizens group that played a pivotal role in drumming up opposition to the Angeles project.

The environmental groups and CAP have yet to take a formal position on the new plan, saying they are still studying it. But they express concerns. The coalition, for instance, fears the pipeline might encourage more oil refining--and thus more air pollution--in the Los Angeles region.

The group also worries that an earthquake could rupture the pipeline.

“If one of these lines breaks, and you have a falling power line, you could have fire and a major disaster,” said Michele Grumet, the coalition’s chairwoman. “(Pipeline proponents) like to make it sound like these rail corridors are isolated, but you go up a block or two and you’ve got residential neighborhoods. . . . These are highly populated areas.”

Oil companies supporting the project say they are interested in a new line mainly for two reasons. For one, Santa Barbara County, nervous about oil spills at sea, is pressing offshore oil producers to use pipelines instead of tankers to carry away their crude.

And second, the companies say, the only pipeline system linking the Santa Barbara County coast to Los Angeles could not carry all the offshore crude that the firms expect to produce.

The companies’ offshore production, now about 50,000 barrels a day, could more than triple over the next four years, corporate officials say.

“This pipeline would seem, at least on the surface, to be the last best hope to transport this crude from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles,” said Chevron spokesman G. Michael Marcy. “This pipeline just plain makes more sense than anything else.”

Santa Barbara County officials acknowledge that if market forces spur a big increase in offshore crude production, added pipeline capacity would probably be justified. But some are skeptical that the Pacific line will be built.

One county official suggests oil companies might be backing the project as a ploy, never intending to have a pipeline built. With the proposal in the works, Santa Barbara County Supervisor Tom Rogers says, Chevron and other companies may be hoping to persuade authorities to allow tanker transport on an interim basis.

Then, he says, the companies will drag their heels on the pipeline project.

“This could be flag-waving (to obtain) a tankering permit,” Rogers said. “I’ll believe it when the pipeline is done.”

Whatever their motivation, the oil companies have contributed most of the $2.5 million needed to prepare Pacific Pipeline’s preliminary studies and its application for state environmental permits, according to Rooney, the Pacific Pipeline president.

The application, filed in October with the California Public Utilities Commission, is the first step in a complex review process that will require the approval of authorities ranging from city officials to the Army Corps of Engineers. At the earliest, construction would begin in the spring of 1993 and last at least a year.

Pacific’s preferred route--there are some alternatives proposed--snakes from Gaviota in Santa Barbara County to Ventura, inland along the Santa Clara Valley to Santa Clarita, then south through Burbank and Los Angeles.

The line would end in two prongs in the South Bay, with one running to the Chevron refinery in El Segundo and the other to the Texaco refinery and a GATX Corp. terminal in Wilmington.

Proponents say the pipeline will cut by 28% the amount of crude oil delivered to the Los Angeles area by tanker, reducing not only the risk of a catastrophic coastal oil spill but also air pollution from ships.

And unlike the Angeles pipeline, they say, construction of the Pacific project will have little impact on county residents because it will stick to Southern Pacific rights of way and involve underground borings--not open trenches--at most street crossings.

Marcy, the Chevron spokesman, said: “You don’t have to dig up Joe Six-Pack and Susie Homemaker’s back yard, so you essentially remove a rational for opposing it.”

Rooney, the Pacific Pipeline president, said the pipeline would also be built with special safety features, including an electrical system intended to prevent corrosion, automatic shut-off valves in sections that cross earthquake fault lines, and a flexible design.

“The line would not be fixed, so it can move around in an earthquake,” Rooney said. “There would be a very small chance (for a rupture.) We’re designing around that.”

Whether such arguments carry the day could become apparent in upcoming PUC public hearings on the pipeline proposal. The hearing for the Los Angeles area is scheduled to be held Feb. 6, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., in Room 1120 of the State Building, 107 S. Broadway, Los Angeles.

Environmental groups say they agree that crude oil pipelines are safer environmentally than oceangoing tankers. But they raised questions ranging from whether a new pipeline is actually needed to general concerns about allowing projects that facilitate the use of offshore oil.

“As long as people get cheap and plentiful gas there will be no incentive for alternative vehicles,” said Bob Hattoy, the Sierra Club’s regional director for Southern California. “L.A. is addicted to oil, and pipelines are hypodermic needles that transfer the drug.”

The community group Coalition Against the Pipeline, meanwhile, worries that the new pipeline will lead to increased air pollution in the Los Angeles Basin. The group has used a similar argument in a so-far-unsuccessful attempt to prevent Mobil from building a pipeline to draw crude from Kern County to its Torrance refinery, replacing a smaller line.

Though pipeline proponents argue that market demand and government air-pollution limits determine the amount of oil that can be refined in the Basin, Grumet, the CAP chairwoman, remains skeptical.

“How do you ensure that more oil won’t be refined?” Grumet asked. “They talk about not doing as much tankering, but how would that be enforced?”

Grumet also questions the pipeline’s ability to endure a severe earthquake without rupturing and releasing large quantities of oil. The pipeline, she points out, would cross more than a dozen quake fault lines.

“You put these pipelines in earthquake areas and you’re putting people at risk,” she said. “These pipelines are going through areas where millions of people live, and if there’s a severe quake, they’re going to break.”

Pacific Pipeline Project A proposed $200-million pipeline would transport crude oil 170 miles from Santa Barbara to local refineries, among them Chevron’s in El Segundo and Texaco’s in Wilmington. Organizers say the pipeline will reduce the amount of crude shipped to the Los Angeles area by tankers by more than 25%