Exxon wants to truck oil after pipe break
LOS ANGELES — How do you move thousands of gallons of crude a day with a key oil pipeline out of commission indefinitely?
Exxon Mobil officials are seeking permission to truck the oil through Santa Barbara County after a ruptured pipeline sent oil spilling into the Pacific Ocean and brought the company’s oil transportation operations to a halt.
The company told Santa Barbara County officials Thursday that it wants to send a fleet of 5,000-gallon tanker trucks along U.S. 101 at a frequency of eight trucks per hour, 24 hours a day, every day, said Kevin Drude, the head of the county’s energy division.
“They are totally pinched off right now,” Drude said. “The only way out of the county is through that pipeline network.”
Crude oil typically moves from Exxon Mobil’s three offshore platforms through a 10.6-mile pipeline owned by Plains All American Pipeline. That pipeline broke May 19 and spilled up to 101,000 gallons of oil along the Gaviota coast.
Since then, Exxon has reduced production from 30,000 to 8,500 barrels a day and stored it in tanks in Las Flores Canyon near U.S. 101. But the company has not been able to move the oil. Now, it has about two weeks of storage space left, said Glenn Russell, Santa Barbara County planning director.
Exxon spokesman Rich- ard Keil said the company wants to use trucks to move oil until the pipeline is operational again.
Environmental activists oppose the proposal to truck crude across the county. They said putting tankers full of crude on roads is a risk.
“We are dealing with enough right now. We don’t want another disaster,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Environmental Defense Center.