Once again oiled sea birds washed onto the beaches of Santa Barbara, California last week. The last time this happened was 1969 when an offshore oil platform spilled a large quantity of oil, an event that is often recognized as marking the beginning of the environmental movement.
Fortunately the recent spill was far smaller and the impact on wildlife was significantly less than the 1969 spill.
We must remember that every engineered product is built to certain specifications each of which has tolerances. In other words, people will make mistakes, a certain number of welds will be expected to be substandard, and the quality of materials will vary. And there is the tension between tolerances and economics; the more rigid the specifications and tolerances, the higher the costs. The final factor in this equation is the expected useful life of the product. In the end, everything that we build or buy is the result of a compromise, and we accept these compromises with the expectation that the risk of failure is low, but present, whether we buy a light bulb, board an airplane, or build a pipeline.
The May 19th Santa Barbara oil spill was caused by a leak in an underground 11 mile, 24" pipeline running from offshore platforms to storage facility in Las Flores. Approximately 105,000 gallons of crude oil leaked before the line was shutdown, with an estimated 21,000 gallons entering a storm water drainage pipe emptying into the ocean and causing a 10 square mile slick of thick crude oil, and miles of fouled beach. The 1969 oil spill from a Union Oil platform has been estimated at 4.3 million gallons and resulted in major fish and wildlife loss, Latest reports from California officials show the death of 18 of sea birds, such as the brown pelican pictured above, and 10 marine mammals. Fishery loss has yet to be determined.
Oil pipelines are typically designed for a 25-year life span, this pipeline, now owned by Plains All American Pipeline, was completed in 1987 and has been in service for the last 28 years. It has the distinction of being the only oil pipeline in seismically active Santa Barbara County that does not have a County-required automatic shutoff valve. Operating then under the name of All American Pipeline the owners successfully challenged that requirement in court claiming that since the pipeline was part of an interstate network it was regulated by Federal law, not County regulation. Federal law does not require automatic shut-off valves in earthquake prone areas.
According to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Plains All American Pipeline operates about 18,000 miles of pipeline in the United States and Canada. The Santa Barbara pipeline is operated by a subsidiary company, Plains Pipeline of Huston, Texas, which operates 6,437 miles of pipeline in 16 states and had over 175 oil spills in the past 10 years, a rate 14% higher than the national average for incidents per pipeline mile. Concerns have been raised about the length of time that it took Plains Pipeline to respond to reports of a leak, visually verify the leak, shutdown the line, and to report the leak to Federal Officials as required.
The cause of the leak has not yet been determined and it would be premature to speculate. However, with a conditional permit having been recently issued to Royal Shell oil to drill in the extremely hostile region of the Arctic Ocean, the pending decision on the XL pipeline, and the increasing shipment of North Dakota oil by rail, the recent Santa Barbara spill is a stark and symbolic reminder that drilling for oil, and its transportation, refining is a dirty business and potential environmental disaster, while it combustion is significantly altering the planet's climate.
The only safe oil, is the oil already safely sequestered in the ground.
