Exxon Agrees to Halt Shipping Near Islands : Environment: Oil company says it will comply with cease-and-desist order by May 1 in a meeting with federal and state officials.

Bowing to mounting regulatory pressure, Exxon Corp. on Friday agreed to stop a tanker shipping operation that carried monthly boatloads of crude oil within 50 miles of the ecologically fragile Channel Islands.

The decision by the Houston-based oil giant came Friday morning during a 1 1/2-hour closed-door meeting in Camarillo with representatives of the federal Minerals Management Service, the California Coastal Commission and Santa Barbara County.

All three agencies told Exxon late last month that it did not have a permit for the low-profile shipping operation from the San Francisco Bay to Los Angeles and that it must cease the shipping by May 1 or face severe civil penalties.

Although Exxon officials agreed to stop the monthly trips that began last October, they still believe the permit they have to produce oil from their Santa Ynez Unit offshore oil fields north of Santa Barbara allows them to ship by tanker.

But Exxon spokesman Bruce Tackett said the company will comply with the May 1 cease-and-desist order.

“We maintained during the meeting that we have the authority to tanker from San Francisco to Los Angeles,” Tackett said. “We told the people in the meeting that we intend to vigorously protect our rights. We obviously have the desire to continue to talk with people and share views. It’s our hope that this situation can be resolved amicably.”

Thomas Dunaway--regional supervisor of development, operations and safety for the federal Minerals Management Service--said he was pleased with the outcome of Friday’s meeting.

“I think it went well,” Dunaway said. “I was pleased that the company recognized that we needed to have them stop this shipping operation, and I was pleased that all parties agreed to continue a dialogue on the issue.”

Since last October, Exxon has been shipping crude oil produced at its Santa Ynez Unit via pipeline to a refinery in the San Francisco Bay Area. From there, some of the oil is sent to a nearby marine terminal and pumped aboard the 11-year-old Exxon tanker R / S Baytown, where it is shipped to Los Angeles Harbor.

In October, 1993, Exxon chose to withdraw its application to ship oil through the Santa Barbara Channel, an action company officials said was prompted by market and economic conditions and that was applauded by environmentalists.

But one year later, Exxon began shipping 200,000 barrels, or 8.4 million gallons, of Santa Ynez crude about once a month to Los Angeles Harbor using the 780-foot-long Baytown, a double-bottomed vessel that can accommodate more than twice that amount.

Although Exxon representatives told officials at the time that they had begun shipping, it took regulatory lawyers until late last month to determine that Exxon had no legal authority to conduct the operation, state and federal officials said.

Had Exxon not agreed to cease tanker shipping by the May 1 deadline, federal Minerals Management Service officials say the company could have faced civil fines of up to $25,000 a day for each day of noncompliance.

Linda Krop, an attorney for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Council, described Friday’s decision as “great news” for the state’s coastal environment.

“We are very glad that they are being held to the terms of their permit,” Krop said. “(Exxon) knew that what they were doing was a violation of their permit going in.”

Meanwhile, environmental activists, who thought they had won a victory in October, 1993, when Exxon abandoned its efforts to ship oil within the Santa Barbara Channel, said they were gladdened by the company’s decision.

“I think this is a definite victory for the marine environment,” said Cynthia Leake, a spokeswoman for the Ventura County Environmental Coalition. “I remain concerned that they still think they may have a claim to tankering, but we’ll take what we can get.”

Lawrence Manson, a spokesman for the Ventura County chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, agreed with Leake and said that while Exxon’s decision to stop tanker shipping was prudent, the incident demonstrated that regulators and environmentalists must keep an eye on gas and oil companies.

“I recently caught my 5-year-old son in the kitchen with his hand in the cookie jar. When I asked him what he was doing, he replied that I never told him that he couldn’t,” Manson said. “I kind of look at this situation like that. It’s become very clear that if we want to protect our marine environment, we will have to watch these people like hawks.”