Activists to Protest Oil Tanker Shipments

Area environmental activists say they will attend a Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday to oppose a 2-year-old policy that allows companies to ship oil by tanker along the coastline from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

The supervisors are considering ways to implement federal policies regarding the oil industry in accordance with policies adopted by Santa Barbara County and the state, said J. Lisle Reed, Pacific regional director of the U. S. Minerals Management Service in Camarillo. Reed oversees industry operations from start-up to abandonment along the Pacific Coast from Canada to Mexico.

Environmentalists, recalling an oil spill that severely damaged the Ventura and Santa Barbara coastline in 1969, oppose a decision by Reed’s agency that allows Exxon to ship crude oil produced in Santa Barbara from the San Francisco Bay Area by tanker to refineries in Los Angeles. The activists say the pipeline method is much safer.

“By sending oil in a pipeline to the Bay Area, and then loading it onto tankers bound for L. A., Exxon successfully circumvented Santa Barbara County policies favoring pipeline transportation,” said Lind Krop, an attorney for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.

“Their cause for existence is to oppose what we do,” Reed said of the Environmental Defense Center.

A permit issued in 1995 allows Texas-based Exxon to ship an average of two 250,000-barrel tanker loads per month through mid-1997, Reed said. The tankers must stay 50 miles off the coast as they make their way south, he said.

While Reed is not taking part in the public comment period, which is expected to begin at 2 p.m., he plans to be in the audience to hear what all sides have to say.

The Board of Supervisors meets at 105 E. Anapamu St.