Port Hueneme Oil-Spill Crew Girds for Duty at New Center : Environment: Emergency response teams are equipped to skim petroleum from the ocean after a major accident.

Nearly three years after realizing it had no adequate means of responding to a catastrophic oil spill, the oil industry this week will unleash five regional cleanup centers that can help contain and recover millions of gallons of leaked petroleum.

The oil-spill response centers have been strategically placed along U.S. coastlines, including one based in a huge warehouse at the Port of Hueneme.

“We have more capabilities (to handle oil spills) than ever before,” said G.E. (Ike) Ikerd, operations manager for the southwest region, which encompasses the coastlines of California and Hawaii as well as the waters extending 200 miles from shore.

The regional cleanup centers are part of the Marine Spill Response Corp., which was created by the oil industry in response to the high-profile Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Under conditions of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the centers must be up and ready to skim oil from the ocean’s surface by Wednesday.

Cleanup crews at the Port Hueneme center say they will have no trouble meeting the deadline.

Oil-spill cleanup workers at the Port of Hueneme have been engaged in practice drills in preparation for an actual emergency.

On one recent morning, an unannounced drill required several of them to spring into action for a fictional oil spill thousands of miles away. Even though it was just an exercise, the staff dropped what it was doing, reported to designated areas and began to set cleanup plans in motion.

That scene contrasts sharply with the industry’s ability to mobilize for cleanup efforts before the Exxon Valdez’s 11-million-gallon oil spill in Alaska.

A study of oil-spill response capabilities conducted after the Exxon spill revealed that neither the oil industry nor the government could handle a spill of 200,000 barrels or more. A barrel holds 42 gallons.

Officials say the new regional oil-spill response centers--equipped with hydraulic-powered skimmers and other oil-recovery and containment tools--will provide crews with cleanup capabilities that have not existed until now.

Such regional centers are not put together cheaply.

The equipment tab for the five centers stands at $400 million. Overall, the expense to set up the centers is expected to run $800 million. On top of that, it is estimated that operating expenses for the five centers will be $100 million a year.

Still, those figures pale in comparison to what it cost Exxon to clean up the Prince William Sound in Alaska after its tanker hit a reef. Cleanup costs ran more than $2 billion.

After the Exxon spill, a consortium of big oil companies agreed it was advantageous for them to put together the Marine Spill Response Centers, or MSRC, before federal and local governments cracked down on the industry.

For example, Congress had delayed even considering oil-industry proposals to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. In California, the state Lands Commission had prohibited any new leases in state waters.

Now that the regional centers are ready to go on-line, oil-spill response vessels will be ready within two hours to deploy to any emergency, said John McLaurin, a spokesman at the Port of Hueneme center.

The response centers will deploy for spills exceeding 1,200 barrels, MSRC officials said, leaving the smaller spills in the hands of local authorities and cleanup cooperatives.

Still, Skip Onstad, southwest region general manager, cautioned the public not to hold too high of hopes for the cleanup crews facing a catastrophic spill.

“One of our greatest fears is that because of our existence there will be unrealistic expectations created in terms of the ability to prevent oil from coming on the shore,” said Onstad, who previously headed the Santa Barbara-based oil-cleanup cooperative Clean Seas.

Many environmental activists say they are not aware of the progress of the response center because it has kept a low profile. Center officials, however, say they have tried to keep local communities, including business interests, involved in their contingency plans for emergencies.

Some environmentalists agree with Onstad that the new facilities should not be viewed as a cure-all for oil spills.

“I’m very skeptical of any technology that tries to take care of massive spills,” said Robert Sollen of the Sierra Club.

“I’m glad they are better prepared,” said Ruth Saadi, who follows coastal environmental issues for the Santa Barbara League of Women Voters. “But anything the size of the Exxon Valdez (spill). . . . They couldn’t handle it.”

In 1990, the southwest regional center at the Port of Hueneme was the first of the centers to get a management staff and facilities. Since then, more than $55 million has been poured into the purchase of equipment to help protect the coastlines of California and Hawaii, officials said.

Nearly two-thirds of that amount went to buy three cleanup ships, each costing about $12 million. One of the ships is home-ported at the Port of Hueneme. The other two are at southwest regional substations in Honolulu and Richmond along the San Francisco Bay.

The vessels--each 210 feet long and 44 feet wide--have a central hydraulic system that powers equipment to skim oil from the ocean’s surface and pump it into holding tanks. Each also has sophisticated communications equipment, including a satellite system, and can be transformed into command and control centers.

In addition, the ships have a helicopter deck in case staff or supplies need to be quickly transported.

The ship kept at the Port of Hueneme has been named the California Responder. Like the Pacific Responder in Richmond and Hawaii Responder in Honolulu, it can hold 4,000 barrels of recovered oil, said the supervisor of the ship, Jeff Jappe.

Jappe, who wears blue coveralls, said the ship’s two main weapons in the case of an oil slick would be high-powered oil skimmers and a long plastic containment boom on giant reels.

To capture spilled oil, the boat extends the floating boom into the water. Then, working with another boat, it drags the boom along the surface to corral the oil slick.

The skimmers are then placed inside the floating boom and can scoop up to 2,200 barrels of oil an hour.

“This particular skimmer and most of our response stuff are designed to handle the heavier oils,” said Kent Creighton, who is in charge of deploying oil-spill responders on the ship.

Oil-industry officials say they are pleased with the development of the regional centers.

“We look at the MSRC and its resources, both human and equipment, as an investment we are more than happy to make,” said G. Michael Marcy, a Chevron spokesman. “It’s an insurance policy that we hope we never will have to utilize.”