PUC Is Asked to Approve Oil Pipeline Construction

Promoters of a 170-mile pipeline widely considered the safest method for transporting oil along the California coastline applied on Thursday for state approval to begin construction.

Pacific Pipeline System Inc., a sister company of the Southern Pacific railroad, filed an application with the California Public Utilities Commission to build the line between Gaviota in Santa Barbara County and Wilmington in Los Angeles County.

It would cost nearly $200 million and would not be complete before the spring of 1994, officials said.

The application has the support of Chevron Corp. and other oil companies that would be able to use the line to ship oil south from offshore oil fields, including Chevron’s controversial Point Arguello project near Gaviota. Chevron and 11 other companies helped pay the $2-million bill for preliminary environmental studies on the project.

Chevron attorney Richard Harris argued Thursday that the oil company’s support of the plan should help persuade decision-makers and the public that Chevron is committed to using a pipeline to ship oil from Point Arguello. In the meantime, Harris said, Chevron should be allowed to ship the oil by tanker down the coast.

Chevron made the same argument before the California Coastal Commission last April, but the panel nonetheless denied Chevron’s appeal of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors’ prohibition on using tankers to ship Point Arguello oil.

In June, Chevron began limited production at Point Arguello; the project now produces about 25,000 barrels of oil a day. The crude is piped inland to Kern County. Some is then shipped to Martinez, Calif., for tankering south to Los Angeles-area refineries, while the rest is moved to Los Angeles via existing pipelines.

“There were indications that people were suspect that the pipeline would ever come to fruition,” Harris said. “We hope now that people will begin to believe . . . our sincerity.”

The plan drew preliminary support from the commission staff, which has opposed shipping oil by tanker through coastal waters.

“We know that tankering has a much higher probability of a spill than shipping by land,” said Jim Burns, chief deputy director of the commission. “We are pleased with the concept of having pipelines to transport the oil.”

But Burns said Chevron still has not committed in writing to use the pipeline.

“There were so many years of promising they would use a pipeline and then avoiding it altogether,” Burns said. “This has happened several times.”

In addition, Burns said, a commitment to use the pipeline at its completion does not diminish the potential hazard of a spill from a tanker in the next four years. “We have the same concern to protect the environment now that we had in April,” he said.

The PUC is expected to take up to two months to decide whether to approve Pacific Pipeline’s application. It would then hold hearings over the following year to get comment from residents and officials of city, county and state agencies.

The 20-inch underground line, which would carry 130,000 barrels of thick crude oil a day, would follow one of two routes along the Southern Pacific right-of-way through Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties.