Oil Companies Try Again to Win Pipeline Support : Energy: Petroleum firms want to build a conduit from Santa Barbara offshore platforms to refineries in L.A. area. A similar plan died five years ago.

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 Los Angeles area 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.

Proposed by Pacific Pipeline System Inc., a sister company of Southern Pacific railroad, the project is being funded with help from a group of oil companies including Chevron, Exxon and Texaco. It calls for construction of a line from Santa Barbara County to Chevron’s El Segundo refinery and to a Texaco refinery and a GATX Corp. terminal in Wilmington.

Because the pipeline would be buried on Southern Pacific right of way along more than 90% of its route, proponents say the plan may fare better politically than the ill-fated Angeles pipeline project, the 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 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 the Coalition Against the Pipeline, 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 position on the new plan, saying they are studying it. But they express concerns. The coalition fears that 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 transport the crude.

Second, the companies hope to triple their offshore oil production, rendering inadequate the only pipeline system now linking the Santa Barbara County coast to Los Angeles. Their offshore production now is about 50,000 barrels a day.

“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.

Santa Barbara County Supervisor Tom Rogers said Chevron may be pursuing the pipeline as a ruse to obtain permission to use oil tankers on an “interim” basis.

Once such permission is granted, he said, the companies could delay the pipeline indefinitely. Chevron has denied such assertions.

Whatever their motivation, the oil companies have absorbed most of the $2.5 million cost to prepare Pacific Pipeline’s preliminary studies and its application for state environmental permits, said 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 through 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 the GATX 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.

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.

Whether such arguments carry the day could become apparent in PUC public hearings on the pipeline proposal. The hearing for the Los Angeles area is set for Feb. 6.

Numerous questions are likely. Besides its public safety concerns, the community group worries that the new pipeline may add to crude brought to the Los Angeles area by tanker. That, the group says, could mean more air pollution as more oil is refined. The group has made a similar argument against a plan by Mobil to build a crude oil pipeline from Kern County to its Torrance refinery, replacing a smaller line.

Proponents of the Pacific project argue that market demand and government air pollution limits determine the amount of oil that can be refined in the basin, not pipeline capacity. But community group leaders are not convinced.

The group’s vice chairman, Richard Adams, said: “This could mean beaucoup air pollution.”