Oil Spilled for 5 Days Before Discovery, Lawyer Says

An oil pipeline that leaked 84,000 gallons of heavy crude into McGrath Lake last December gushed for five days before the spill was finally discovered Christmas morning, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

He also disclosed that pipeline operator Bush Oil Co. never bothered to repair a safety device on the 40-year-old line that could have prevented the leak.

The valve broke in February, 1993--10 months before the buried pipe west of Oxnard gave way and caused one of Ventura County’s worst pipeline spills, officials said.

“There was no safety valve on this pipe at all,” said Glen M. Reiser, the Oxnard attorney brought in by the Ventura County district attorney’s office to prosecute the case.

Details of the spill--which killed hundreds of migratory birds and caused the closure of seven miles of coastline in the days after Christmas--came Tuesday as local prosecutors for the first time released evidence gathered by state Fish and Game investigators.

Reiser also said he has made a settlement offer to officials at Berry Petroleum, the Taft-based firm that owns Bush Oil. The offer would allow Berry officials to settle the case by paying fines rather than face felony charges, he said.

Company executives responded with a counteroffer, but prosecutors on Tuesday had not yet decided whether to accept it, Reiser said. Terms were not released for either settlement proposal.

“If they reject (the offer), then there’s going to be a felony filing as soon as this week,” Reiser said. “The felony filing would name the corporation, and there’s a likelihood it would name a number of corporate officers and employees.”

A felony conviction could mean massive fines for the company and possible state prison terms for up to 10 Berry executives and workers if a court deemed them responsible for the spill, Reiser said.

Fines could reach $2.5 million, or $500,000 for each day oil leaked into the sensitive wetland habitat, Reiser said.

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A separate investigation has been conducted by the state Water Quality Control Board, which voted Monday to send the case to the attorney general’s office for possible civil action.

In a statement released Tuesday, the company said it already has spent more than $8 million cleaning up the spill.

But Berry executives and their attorneys declined to discuss details of the Fish and Game investigation. Larry L. Hines, an attorney for Berry Petroleum, confirmed that his clients have made a settlement counteroffer.

Hines also said he had filed claims with at least six local and state law enforcement agencies, which he said failed to follow up on early reports of the spill.

“We’re asking for an apportionment of final damages,” he said, referring to Berry’s claims against the Oxnard police and fire departments, the Channel Islands Harbor Patrol, the California Highway Patrol, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Parks and Recreation.

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“We’re asking them to be responsible for the amount of oil that would not have been spilled had they properly notified the company, which would have immediately shut down the pipeline,” Hines said.

Several citizens reported seeing oil near McGrath Lake on Dec. 24, a full day before a federal Minerals Management Service crew spotted the leak from a helicopter on their way to inspect an offshore oil platform Christmas Day.

But investigators said the company is far more liable for the spill than any government agency. For instance, Reiser said, the pipeline that eventually ruptured was never intended to pump crude oil.

When Berry bought the operation from Chevron three years ago, the pipeline had been abandoned for more than 10 years. Chevron had used the buried line to transport natural gas, but Berry decided to begin pumping crude oil through the pipeline without upgrading it, the prosecutor said.

“This line had no cathodic protection,” said Reiser, referring to a series of devices that routinely are implanted along metal pipes to protect them from corrosion. “The likelihood of corrosion is much greater (in underground pipes).”

Reiser said he has been unable to confirm the company’s contention that it routinely pressure-checked its pipelines in an effort to ensure reliability.

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“We’ve asked Berry Petroleum for documents which corroborate any leak testing they performed, but they haven’t produced any,” Reiser said. “They’ve taken the position that these records don’t exist.”

Signs of life are returning to McGrath Lake, which has perennially been home to numerous species of migrating waterfowl. Fish and Game biologists said Tuesday that the area shows few signs of the environmental disaster that occurred there less than six months ago.

“The creek area where the oil flowed down from the break in the pipeline looks really good,” said Fish and Game biologist Heidi Togstad, who visited the site recently.

“We could only find very small amounts of sheen, about two inches across, and some in the lake,” she said. “But we saw a lot of birds using the lake, the vegetation appears to be recovering well and the water looks good.”