Dismantling of Oil Rigs Marks Change

The seascape along the Santa Barbara Channel has been colored for decades by surfers, pelicans, freighters and offshore oil drilling platforms.

Four of the oil rigs are nicknamed Heidi, Hope, Hazel and Hilda. These Erector-set-like hunks of metal stand 80 feet above the water, weigh 6 million pounds and together have pumped up 63 million barrels of crude oil for Chevron.

And by August, they should be gone.

They will be the first oil drilling platforms dismantled off the California coast since 1988 and will mark a coming wave of oil platform demolitions. There are 23 offshore platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel, but as the oil wells dry up, government officials figure that many more will be ready to come down in the next decade.

The Chevron oil platform removal project, at a cost of $35 million, is the most expensive ever done off the state’s coast. The giant oil company’s final permit from the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District seems close at hand, and Chevron expects to start the project in April.

The oil platforms near Carpinteria still have some oil underneath them, but it is no longer worth Chevron’s time to pump it out. As oil is bled from wells, pressure in an oil reservoir drops, and the flow of oil gradually slows. Eventually, the daily production of crude oil is so low that it won’t cover the cost of operating the machinery.

Offshore oil platforms may be considered an eyesore, but how they are removed is a touchy issue, especially around Santa Barbara, where a 1969 crude oil spill helped trigger the state’s environmental movement.

“We all want to see the platforms gone, but we simply wanted to get it done in an environmentally clean way,” said Peter Cantle, engineering manager for the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District.

It has taken Chevron four years to negotiate its way through myriad government agencies, and the oil giant has agreed to a bevy of environmental concessions.

To win state approval, Chevron agreed to do most of its platform removal work in the summer to avoid the gray whale migration along the coast. And Chevron’s use of undersea explosives will be limited, both to avoid killing fish and to limit shock waves that could injure the delicate hearing systems of porpoises, whales and other mammals.

Chevron also will have a marine mammal expert on hand, and helicopters will fan out over the platforms, “to make sure all of God’s creatures aren’t there,” said Tom Thomas, president of American Pacific Marine in Oxnard, Chevron’s chief contractor on the project. Seals, whales or other mammals sighted within 1,000 yards of the platforms will be chased off before the explosives are set.

In 1992, Chevron started talks with the State Lands Commission--lead agency on the project because the platforms sit inside the three-mile limit of state waters (federal waters run from three to 200 miles offshore.)

“There were some difficulties and delays due to Chevron’s inexperience,” said Peter Johnson, chief petroleum engineer with the commission. “The oil and gas industry is not alone in walking away from the permitting process in bewilderment.”

The commission approved the project in August, but Chevron still had to come to terms with the Santa Barbara County air pollution district.

Early on, Chevron estimated that its flotilla of diesel-powered ships, cranes and barges would emit 130 tons of chemicals that, in sunlight, could bake to form ozone.

Chevron has whittled that down to 76 tons by using reformulated diesel fuel with lower sulfur content, by installing new fuel injectors on its engines and by tinkering with its turbo chargers.

In December, the county agency issued a tentative permit.

But one legal impediment remains. Marc Chytilo, chief counsel with the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara, has filed comments with the county air pollution district to further trim the project’s emissions. He worries that Chevron’s project could tip the county’s summer ozone levels past federal and state standards.

Chytilo’s group still wants the platforms to go, and figures that the project, as planned, can start by April.

When the work begins, it will be an intensive four-month enterprise, with 150 workers and divers, working in shifts 24 hours a day.

Hazel was the first of the platforms up and pumping in 1958; Heidi the last in 1966. The deepest Chevron platform stands in 136 feet of water and is about 215 feet tall, and the four platforms are widely scattered.

Removing the oil platforms is four times harder and more dangerous than putting them up, Thomas said. After 30 years in the sea it’s hard to tell how sound the metal is, and during the Chevron salvaging work there will be blocks, shackles and cranes rigged to hoist as much as a 400-ton piece of metal. Thomas said he always worries about an ocean swell, tsunami or earthquake that could turn things “very dangerous.”

Some preliminary work has been done. Chevron plugged with cement the 135 oil wells under the four platforms and cleaned out old piping, so the risk of any big oil spill, both Chevron and environmentalists agree, is remote.

In April, Thomas plans to start scanning the sea bottom with remote-controlled vehicles, then divers will cut away jackets on the undersea pilings, using high-pressure grit cutters, not undersea torches, to limit pollution. His crew also will start cutting apart the platforms above water.

The heavy work begins in June. A derrick barge will sail in and the sea team will start cutting down and hauling out large chunks of the top platform, till only poles are sticking out of the sea. Next, “we shoot the legs,” said Thomas, his lingo for setting off underwater explosives to sever the pilings.

Explosives will be buried 15 feet below the mud line, so from the shore, passersby will hear only a thud.

And in another nod to environmental concerns, as the huge platforms are cut into pieces, the scrap will be loaded onto barges, then hauled to Long Beach for recycling. “We’ll probably get it back in Toyotas, I imagine,” Thomas said.