Safety Line Dismantled Prior to Rincon Deaths : Accident: An eyewitness says oil-field supervisors disconnected the device hours before three workers were killed by fumes.

Hours before toxic fumes killed three men at a Rincon oil field last week, Vintage Petroleum supervisors dismantled a temporary flow line intended to divert water, oil or gas flooding into the well, a company consultant said Monday.

The three workers were overcome by deadly fumes about noon Wednesday when thousands of gallons of oily water mixed with the gas poured into a work pit at the top of the well. The three had jumped into the pit in an effort to stop the flow.

Four other workers were injured after breathing the fumes while pulling their stricken colleagues from the pit.

Jon Crawford, a private consultant for the Oklahoma-based Vintage Petroleum Co., which was trying to bring a dormant well back into production, said the crew had used the interim flow line for a week while they were working on deeper portions of the 10,000-foot-deep well.

But Wednesday morning, when the operation shifted to an area 2,000 to 2,800 feet below ground, they opted to remove the flow line altogether because there had been no evidence of water, oil or gas deep in the well, added Crawford, who said he was at the scene that morning.

Rather than move the safety device to the level where the crew was working, they simply disconnected the device, Crawford said. “It was on the ground, and it was just moved out of the way,” he said.

Vintage executives, who hired two outside companies to perform work on the well, declined to discuss the removal of the flow line Monday, saying their investigation is still under way and it would be premature to comment.

Flow lines are hoses designed to capture any runoff water, oil or gases emitted from a well while crews are working nearby, said Michael Furrow, vice president of Pride Petroleum, the firm that employed the three who were killed.

But there never seemed to be a need to use the safety device at the well, located about 10 miles north of Ventura, Furrow said.

“The reason we didn’t have a flow line on there is because we didn’t think it was going to overflow,” said Furrow, citing reports from workers in the field. “We’d been there for several days and there had never been any problem.”

Furrow, who on Monday attended the last of three funerals, said that a flow line placed at the correct underground level would have alleviated the flooding. Asked if it would have saved any lives, he answered, “I can’t say that.”

“It would have diverted any fluids, liquid or gas away from the cellar and away from the wellhead,” Furrow said. “All you would have to do is hook up a piece of hose to that outlet and run it to a tank.”

Disclosure that a safety line was moved on the morning of the accident surprised officials of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency investigating the accident.

“This is exactly the type of information we need to verify and determine,” said John Duncan, the Cal-OSHA deputy director heading up the investigation into the Vintage accident.

“One of the central issues is whether proper safety procedures were followed,” he said. “This is clearly one of those types of procedures.”