An underground pipeline spewed thousands of liters of crude oil on Thursday near the southern California coast, but the foul-smelling goo was contained in a lengthy stretch of ravine and never reached nearby beaches.
About 110,000 liters of oil spilled and flowed in the canyon near Ventura, fire authorities said.
Resident Kirk Atwater said he called 911 after smelling and hearing the flowing crude.
Photo: AFP
“We started getting this horrendous smell and I knew right away what it was,” Atwater said.
Atwater, 56, said he went up the canyon on his scooter and found the oil gushing from an above-ground box that he surmised covers equipment.
“It was just pouring out like water coming out of a fire hydrant,” he said.
He said he found a posted telephone number and reported the leak to the pipeline company.
Fire crews responded and a pump house operating the line was shut down. Firefighters built a dam of dirt to keep the oil from moving farther.
The oil left a black stain down the brush and tree-filled arroyo.
The line operator, Crimson Pipeline, estimated that at most 95,000 liters were released, spokeswoman Kendall Klingler said.
The cause was under investigation, she said.
The spill was the 11th for Crimson Pipeline since 2006, with prior releases totaling about 1.2 million liters of crude oil and causing US$5.9 million in property damage, according to accident reports submitted by the company to federal regulators.
The largest was a 2008 spill of 1.06 million liters — one of three blamed on an equipment failure. All the spills occurred in southern California.
The leak on Thursday occurred near a valve on an underground line that runs from Ventura to Los Angeles. The line was closed for maintenance and crews had replaced that valve the day before, Klingler said.
The line contained a total of 320,000 liters of crude.
“The initial concern was that there was a chance that it could have made its way further, but the spill was contained very early on and a lot of damage has been mitigated because of that,” Klingler said.
The spill occurred in the Hall Canyon area and flowed into the Prince Barranca, a ravine that ends near the Ventura Pier.
The oil was produced by a company called Aera Energy.
Firefighters had a training exercise with Crimson Pipeline and an oil spill cleanup company about two weeks ago, including building a dam as was done on Thursday, Ventura County Fire Department Captain Scott Quirarte said.
Four of the prior Crimson Pipeline spills were blamed on corrosion and two on excavation damage. An electrical arc from a power pole was the cause of another leak.
The pipeline is an intrastate pipe, meaning it does not cross out of California and is therefore outside of federal jurisdiction, US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration spokeswoman Artealia Gilliard said.
She said the federal agency was sending personnel to assist on scene, but the investigation would be led by California officials.
The spill came 13 months after more than 450,000 liters of oil spilled on the coast of neighboring Santa Barbara County. Some of the crude flowed into the ocean at Refugio State Beach, killing birds and sea lions. That pipeline, owned by Plains All American Pipeline, was found to have corrosion.
Federal regulators said last month that Plains failed to prevent corrosion in its pipes, detect the rupture or respond swiftly as crude streamed toward the ocean on May 19 last year.
The report was issued just two days after Plains was indicted in Santa Barbara County Superior Court on 46 criminal counts.
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