Texaco Is Not Responsible for Major Spill, Study Says : Environment: State officials are confident company is at fault for 200,000-gallon leak north of Ventura.

New information from a study funded by Texaco supports the oil company’s contention that it is not responsible for the worst pipeline spill ever in Ventura County, company officials said Thursday.

Results of the so-called fingerprinting tests were disclosed at Texaco’s School Canyon production plant, where water quality and Fish and Game officials joined local prosecutors Thursday for an on-site inspection of the cleanup in progress.

But state investigators said they remain confident that Texaco is responsible for the 200,000 or more gallons of gas condensate that leaked into a natural ground-water basin 50 feet beneath the surface in School Canyon just north of the Ventura city limit.

“They were pointing the finger at Shell, but we took samples and they came back matching Texaco,” said Holly Ethridge, the state Fish and Game warden leading the investigation.

Shell Oil leases an oil field immediately west of where the spill was first discovered, but Ethridge said the Fish and Game fingerprinting exonerates Texaco’s neighbor.

Texaco attorney Robert Fuller, who toured the cleanup site with state and local officials Thursday, said the Fish and Game analysis is based on “bad science” and therefore is inaccurate.

He said a just-completed study funded by Texaco proves that the toxic petroleum byproduct could not have come from the company’s facility.

“It’s frustrating because the chief suspect is a Texaco pipeline, but we know with certainty it wasn’t that pipeline,” Fuller said. “There is no match between the Texaco condensate, which runs through the pipeline, and any of the condensate” found in School Canyon.

Up to 300,000 gallons of a gas-like mixture was discovered after Fish and Game wardens noticed a sheen of oil in School Canyon Creek, a seasonal stream that flows into the Ventura River.

Heavy rains over the 1993 winter apparently raised the ground-water table and pushed the toxins into the creek, officials said.

More than 100 houses are clustered within a mile of the site, although Fish and Game officials said the spill probably does not pose any threat to residents or surrounding habitat.

Texaco is in the midst of what will become a years-long cleanup effort that so far has recovered more than 64,000 gallons of the condensate. Company officials estimate there are still at least 208,000 gallons of the gasoline-like liquid left in the underground basin.

The oil company has installed seven recovery wells that pump the solution from 50 feet beneath the surface to nearby storage tanks, where it is later refined into a usable fuel such as butane.

Three other wells will be added to the cleanup effort later this month, Fuller said, citing a work plan imposed on the company by the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

State Fish and Game investigators have been quietly collecting information about the toxic spill for more than a year. It was first reported by Texaco in January, 1993, but later discovered by state regulators to be much larger.

It was not until this past March, however, that Fish and Game investigators convinced a judge to issue a search warrant for the Texaco offices that the spill became public.

Suspecting that Texaco had covered up evidence of the spill, dozens of investigators converged on the School Canyon plant and confiscated thousands of pages of records related to the leak and the company’s operations.

Ethridge said she still is several months from making a recommendation about criminal or civil charges to the district attorney.

“We’re gaining ground on it,” she said of the probe. “We’ve been going through the documents and we’re condensing the materials we feel are pertinent to our investigation.”