The pipeline company that has accepted responsibility for Tuesday's Santa Barbara oil spill had previously pledged to improve its pipeline safety and leak detection technology as part of a federal consent decree, court records show.
Houston-based Plains All-American Pipeline LP entered into the agreement in 2010, after the federal Environmental Protection Agency brought a civil case alleging violations of the Clean Water Act. The EPA citied 10 separate oil spills totaling 273 thousand gallons in four states -- Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Kansas.
As part of the terms of the settlement, the company "neither admits nor denies any liability."
To minimize the risk of future leaks, Plains did agree to take steps including "enhanced integrity management and corrosion control," and "enhanced pipeline leak detection."
Tuesday's spill released some 21,000 gallons of crude oil into the Santa Barbara channel, Plains estimated. The source has been traced inland to a leak from a 24-inch underground pipeline that terminates at the Las Flores Canyon oil processing facility.
As much as 105,000 gallons could have escaped from the pipeline, said Rick McMichael, director of pipeline operations.
What caused the pipe to fail was not immediately apparent. A team of federal investigators from the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) was responding to the site Tuesday, according to Michele Rogo, EPA Emergency Response Coordinator.
"Once we identified the leak as coming from our pipeline, we shut it down immediately," said Darren Palmer, Plains District Manager.
Palmer acknowledged that monitoring equipment had not alerted the company to the leak before receiving outside notification. A leak detection probe known as a "pig" had been run through the pipeline two weeks earlier, Palmer said, but the results had not yet been "interpreted" before the leak became apparent.
"How come they didn't know? How come our people had to notify them of the leak?" asked Doreen Farr, a Santa Barbara County supervisor who represents the Goleta coast, where the spill
occurred. "If it had been monitored and inspected, it should not have been leaking as it did."
The pipeline flows about 2,000 barrels an hour, Palmer said. That would amount to more than 100,000 gallons an hour. A year ago, an estimated 10,000 gallons of oil spurted from another Plains pipeline in an industrial section of the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, adjacent to Glendale.
"We're talking about a repeat offender here," said Damon Nagami, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he directs the Souther California Ecosystems Project. "I think a lot of questions need to be asked of the company, and of regulators."
Under the terms of the consent decree, Plains agreed to pay a $3.25 million civil penalty, and to spend mllions more upgrading its system.
"Ideally you'd like a pipeline to shut off automatically when a leak is detected. That did not happen in Santa Barbara," said Nagami. He cited research showing that automatic leak detection systems in general fail 95 percent of the time.
So far this year, a total of 18 pipeline "incidents" have occurred in California, causing total property damage of nearly $44 million dollars, according to PHMSA. Moreover, 11 injuries and one fatality were reported.
It has been decades since a serious spill in Santa Monica Bay, west of Los Angeles County. In 1993, Chevron agreed to pay half a million dollars in fines and restitution after a spill of some 20,000 gallons of petroleum. It was released during a mishap at the offshore tanker berth connected to Chevron's El Segundo refinery via an underwater pipeline.
"The bottom line is there are risks when it comes to the oil transportation infrastructure," said Nagami.
