Oil Tankers to Start Taking Coastal Route : Environment: Coastal Commission will allow eight trips a month from Gaviota terminal, raising concerns about spills.

Under permits issued by the California Coastal Commission, oil tankers will begin hauling oil down the Ventura County coast next week from the Gaviota Marine Terminal 50 miles northwest of Santa Barbara, officials said Friday.

Eight tankers a month will be allowed to carry crude oil from the terminal, which stores crude oil from Point Arguello offshore fields, to refineries in Los Angeles.

Although tankers and barges have been carrying oil through the Santa Barbara Channel for years, the giant tankers had been barred from the Gaviota terminal since it underwent a $50-million renovation eight years ago.

Without being able to use tankers at Gaviota, the oil companies have had to pump the oil by pipeline to a San Francisco facility, where the crude was transferred to a tanker and transported to Los Angeles.

At Gaviota, only tankers with double hulls will be used. Although each tanker is capable of carrying about 10 million gallons, the added presence of the tankers will only account for “a small increase” in the overall amount of oil shipped through the channel, said G. Michael Marcy, a Chevron spokesman.

But environmentalists are still concerned.

“Most spills occur in the loading and unloading process,” said Linda Krop, an attorney with the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center. “Gaviota is in a very sensitive and pristine (ecological) area with heavy surf conditions. It’s a horrible place for any kind of spill.”

Environmentalists are also upset because the tankers will be going through the Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary and passing within three miles of Anacapa Island. Even the tankers’ extra hulls do not soothe apprehensions.

“Double hulls don’t mean there won’t be an oil spill,” Krop said. “Major oil spills occur during explosion or fire.”

The Coastal Commission conditionally approved the use of tankers last January, but it wasn’t until last week that all the conditions were met by the dozen oil companies involved in the project.

The oil companies also agreed to load the tankers only during optimum weather conditions and to surround the ships with oil containment booms during loading.

The oil companies will be allowed to use tankers until Jan. 1, 1996. At that time, the consortium is supposed to have finished construction of a pipeline that would carry the oil overland to Los Angeles refineries.

The pipeline project preferred by the oil companies over several alternatives is the Pacific Pipeline, which would be 171 miles long, with 53 miles snaking through Ventura County.

The permits are scheduled to be officially issued Monday, when the consortium puts $600,000 in an escrow account, a Coastal Commission spokeswoman said. The money will pay for an inventory of sensitive habitats along the coast and the nearby Channel Islands as part of an oil-spill contingency plan.

Marcy said the tankers will be using the terminal by Wednesday.