Agency Sued Over Crude Oil Shipments

Two environmental groups have filed a lawsuit blasting the federal government for allowing Exxon to ship oil via tanker along the California coast, including Ventura County, without proper environmental review.

The Sierra Club and Citizens Planning Assn. in Santa Barbara are seeking an injunction to force the federal Minerals Management Service to halt the transportation of crude oil from San Francisco to Los Angeles until the federal permit that allows the shipping has undergone comprehensive public review.

The suit, filed Tuesday by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Center, which recently opened a Ventura office, accuses the federal government of violating several environmental laws by failing to conduct sufficient reviews and by not requiring Exxon to revise its permit to allow the tanker shipments.

“This lawsuit is as much about process as it is about tankering,” said David Landecker of the 800-member Citizens Planning Assn. “What we’re simply saying is that the Minerals Management Service does not have the right to change the terms of the permit without public review and participation. It’s simply wrong.”

Environmental groups fear that using tankers to carry up to 10 million gallons of locally produced crude oil along the California coast is courting large-scale ecological disaster in such sensitive areas as Channel Islands National Park.

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Major oil spills, such as the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska and the blowout of an offshore platform that sullied beaches in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in 1969, remain fresh in the minds of environmentalists.

“I don’t believe we have made a shipment by tanker since last summer,” Exxon spokesman Bruce Tackett said Wednesday. “There have been no crude oil shipments in recent months.”

But Landecker said that is beside the point.

Environmentalists maintain that the federal permit authorizing Exxon to pump oil from three platforms off Santa Barbara does not allow that crude to be shipped to Los Angeles via tanker from San Francisco.

A network of onshore pipelines is customarily used to deliver oil from Exxon’s processing facility near El Capitan State Park, north of Goleta, to refineries in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. But in 1994, a lack of pipeline capacity prompted the Houston-based company to begin using tankers instead.

The California Coastal Commission informed the Minerals Management Service three years ago that shipping the crude violated the company’s permit conditions, and the federal agency agreed. But after what environmentalists characterize as heavy lobbying by Exxon, the agency reversed its decision in 1995 and agreed to allow up to 24 tanker loads per year through August 1997.

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Minerals Management Service officials said that the shipping did not constitute a significant change in activities allowed under its permit, and that the “limited nature” of the tanker use caused a “minimal incremental environmental risk to the California coast.” Only seven tanker trips occurred from January 1996 through July 1996, agency spokesman John Romero said.

“With regards to the tankering issue and our position and what we did or why--we don’t have a comment at this time until we’ve had appropriate time to review the litigation,” he said.

Santa Barbara County officials, calling the shipping an attempt to circumvent the conditions of the local permit, scheduled a public hearing to demand that Exxon prove that it had not violated county regulations. Exxon sued to have the hearing canceled, and a U. S. District Court judge ruled last year that the county had no jurisdiction over the oil shipments.

Both parties appealed the ruling and the lawsuit was finally dismissed last month. The public interest law firm picked up the legal baton this week and sued the federal agency on behalf of the environmental groups.

“By negotiating a private agreement with Exxon, [Minerals Management Service] precluded any review by the public, the county of Santa Barbara or the California Coastal Commission,” said Linda Krop, senior staff attorney for the Environmental Defense Center. “Most importantly, MMS has placed the coast of California at risk of a major oil spill.”