As Plains All American Pipeline prepares to make the case for its proposal to replace more than 100 miles of oil pipeline across three counties, environmental groups are gearing up to fight against its approval.
If approved, the project would allow the company to replace 123 miles of existing pipeline through SLO, Santa Barbara, and Kern counties. Once completed, the pipeline would again be able to transport crude oil from offshore drilling platforms. The pipelines and the platforms have been shut down since May 2015, when a pipeline rupture released 142,800 gallons of crude oil along the coast near Gaviota.
“Our desire is to replace the line versus repairing the existing line, and that will allow the platforms, which Exxon currently owns, to come back online and transport the oil,” said Steve Greig, the director of governmental affairs for Plains All American.
The project is still a long way from approval and will need to go through public hearings and an environmental review process at local and federal levels. Environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club, have promised to oppose the project.
“Offshore drilling is dirty and dangerous and needs to be phased out from California’s Central Coast,” Blake Kopcho, an organizer for the Center for Biological Diversity, told New Times.
Greig emphasized that the project would not result in any new oil production and would only bring the existing facilities back online. He also said the project included a number of measures to improve the safety of the pipeline and prevent spills, including lowering the pipeline’s operating pressure, doubling the number of cutoff valves, and increasing the pipeline’s wall thickness in certain areas.
“We understand the communities and the importance of the Pacific Ocean, and we agree that we want to protect the environment,” Greig said.
Those measures aren’t reassuring enough for opponents of the project. Kopcho noted that Plains All American was found guilty on multiple criminal counts in connection with the 2015 spill.
“While we appreciate their efforts to make the pipeline safe, we know that at the end of the day spills are impossible to completely prevent,” he said. “Plains doesn’t deserve a second chance to spill again.”
Both sides of the issue were on full display on Jan. 29 at the South County Regional Center in Arroyo Grande where Plains All American hosted the first of three open-house-style events on the project, allowing members of the community to talk with company officials. Outside of the event, opponents of the project gathered to protest, handing out flyers that detailed their concerns.
The open house comes after several high-profile battles over oil have already taken place on the Central Coast. In 2017, SLO County rejected a proposal by Phillips 66 to build a rail spur at its refinery on the Nipomo Mesa. In 2018, local environmental groups placed a measure to ban fracking and new oil and gas exploration in the county, but it did not pass. Earlier this year, the SLO City Council approved a resolution opposing both the pipeline project and a proposal from ExxonMobile to truck oil through Santa Barbara County.
In Santa Barbara County, the Board of Supervisors in early 2018 approved plans by ERG Operating Comapny to build more than 2 miles of pipeline in Cat Canyon. Currently, the county is conducting a comment period for a draft environmental review on a proposal by Aera Energy to redevelop oil in East Cat Canyon.
Environmental review scoping hearings for Plains All American’s project are slated to begin later this month. Both supporters and opponents of the project will likely participate to make their cases.
“There will be enviromental study and analysis done,” Greig said, “and at the end of the day, the decision makers will have the ability to make a determination on the merits of the project.” Δ
Staff Writer Chris McGuinness can be reached at cmcguinness@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 7-17, 2019.
You can’t have it all. You can’t protest to stop drilling oil while also shutting down our state’s largest source of clean energy – Diablo Canyon. Take a look at the CA ISO app, and see how much baseload california actually uses. Baseload is the amount of energy demanded/used that’s completely below any up-top fluxuations based on time of day or season. We need ALL of the baseload to be clean energy, and to accomplish that without fossil fuels, we need MORE nuclear, not less.
Plains All American has a terrible record – not just here but all across the country and Canada. Plains All American has been cited for everything from not completing repairs ordered by inspectors and failing to install equipment to prevent pipe corrosion to not having adequate firefighting gear at its facilities and instead relying on local volunteer fire departments.
The LA Times examined data kept by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and discovered that Plains has been cited for 175 safety and maintenance violations since 2006, and incidents involving the companys pipes have caused more than $23 million in property damage while spilling more than 688,000 gallons of hazardous liquid.
Thats more than 3 times the national average for incidents per mile of pipe, the Times reports, adding that among the more than 1,700 pipeline operators listed in the PHMSA database, only four companies had more infractions than Plains.
Plains is hardly alone in its track record of reckless operations. According to another analysis of PHMSA data by the Center for Biological Diversity, there have been 621 oil and gas pipeline leaks, spills, ruptures, explosions and other incidents in the state of California since 1986. All told, these accidents have caused some 200 injuries, nearly 50 deaths and $769 million in damages, the CBD says.
Get out of the business, Plains All American. Your company is a danger to public health and environmental integrity.