Torrance Gives Mobil Tentative OK for Pipeline

Mobil Oil Corp. has won tentative approval from Torrance to replace an underground crude oil pipeline with a larger conduit. But final City Council authorization for Torrance’s segment of the proposed 92-mile, $88-million pipe looks likely to come with strings attached.

Approving the project “in concept” Tuesday, the council said it plans to prohibit Mobil from using the line to boost refining at its north Torrance plant or to distribute the crude to other oil companies.

The conditions reflect concern that more refining would cause additional air pollution and safety hazards and that large-scale crude oil distribution by the refinery would increase truck traffic around the plant.

The new pipeline would link Mobil’s Torrance refinery to oil fields in Kern County. The line, which Mobil hopes to complete in the South Bay this summer, has been approved by Los Angeles and Hawthorne--one of three South Bay cities along the conduit’s route. The other two South Bay cities, Torrance and Inglewood, have yet to grant permits for the work.

It would transport up to 95,000 barrels of crude a day, 50% more than the current pipe. At Tuesday’s meeting, a Mobil spokesman insisted that any increases in crude the refinery receives from the new pipe would be offset by reductions in deliveries from ocean-going tankers and trucks.

Council members scheduled a final vote on the pipeline question for April 21. Citing a history of spills that have dogged the crude line Mobil is seeking to replace, Mayor Katy Geissert said Wednesday that she expects the project to win final approval--provided the stipulations are included.

“Council members have come to the conclusion that this is a safer means of transport than the current means,” she said. “(But) I think the council is going to insist on the conditions.”

A Mobil spokesman said the oil company has not formed an opinion on the council’s position.

“We are still studying it,” Mobil spokesman Barry Engelberg said Wednesday. “We have not reached any conclusion whatsoever.”

However, a group that has opposed the pipeline plan strongly criticized the council’s decision. The group, Coalition Against the Pipeline, said Torrance leaders failed to address safety concerns about the pipeline and to specify how they would enforce the conditions they plan to place on the project.

“Take the requirement about how much the pipeline allows (Mobil) to refine,” said Michele Grumet, the coalition’s coordinator. “They didn’t even talk about how that would be verified and what the penalties are.”

Several council members and residents attending Tuesday’s meeting expressed concern that Mobil might use the new pipeline to refine more oil, worsening air pollution and increasing the risk of accidents.

Said Torrance resident Craig Kessler: “Nobody can tell us what would be the consequences of increasing the (refinery’s) capacity.”

Councilman Don Lee, meanwhile, said he fears the new pipeline might allow Mobil to distribute large quantities of crude to other oil companies--even though a Mobil attorney said that was “not the intent” of the project.

“I don’t want to see that (refinery) become a crude oil distribution point,” Lee said.

The preliminary council vote to bar such practices as a condition of the pipeline’s approval came on a unanimous vote. But at least one council member appeared willing to approve the project without the stipulations.

Councilman Bill Applegate said that because a substantial increase in Mobil’s air emissions would have to be approved by air-quality regulators, the company could not easily use its new pipeline to boost plant operations.

“I don’t see where they could arbitrarily come in and decide to double or triple their capacity,” Applegate said. He also argued that if the larger pipeline results in less tanker traffic, the environment would win. “That means less problems out on the ocean,” he said.

Coalition Against the Pipeline contends that, besides failing to spell out how they would enforce the two conditions for approving the pipeline, Torrance council members ignored key safety questions.

Among them, they say, is that the pipeline route would pass close to the Jensen Filtration Plant in Granada Hills, which treats water for 2.5 million residents of West Los Angeles County and Ventura County. The Mobil plan does not provide for double-lining the pipe there, they say, even though the area is vulnerable to earthquakes.

Geissert pointed out Wednesday that the council concerned itself with the pipeline segment planned for Torrance, not sections to be built in Granada Hills or other places.

Grumet, of the Coalition Against the Pipeline, criticized that approach.

“If the water supply is contaminated, that affects everybody,” she said Wednesday. “This isn’t just this little segment in Torrance. You have to look at the entire picture.”

The pipe would run south through Inglewood, Lennox and part of Hawthorne along Inglewood Avenue, east to Prairie Avenue on 120th Street in Hawthorne, and south on Prairie to Mobil’s refinery in north Torrance.