The red flags came early.
Selling offshore oil drilling leases in the midst of shipping lanes seemed reckless. The construction of a complex of oil rigs just off the Orange County coast was an invitation to disaster.
But the green light was given, and in the late 1970s, Shell Oil Co. finally built three towering buildings in the middle of a sea route that led to two of the busiest ports in the world.
Maritime officials tried to stop construction on the platforms, according to documents reviewed by The Times. They warned of a possible disaster in the event a ship collided with one of them, igniting the oil and hydrocarbons that gushed through a circle of boreholes and pipes.
The President of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn. called the Shell Oil Co. plan an “unacceptable hazard to shipping.”
“You want to put these platforms on the veranda of the busiest port in the west,” said Philip Steinberg at a public hearing. “We would end up with a real minefield full of obstacles. It invites you to a catastrophe. … All it takes is a platform to cause a catastrophic problem. “
Forty years later, that minefield was re-examined when investigators investigate the possibility that an anchor strike led to the oil spill that destroyed the Orange County’s coastline.
Although the shipping lanes were relocated about a mile west of the platforms in 2000, the port’s unprecedented congestion has pushed maritime traffic both above and below the sea close to the platforms’ sophisticated infrastructure.
Dozens of ships waiting to be berthed are moored near the platforms and their underwater oil lines, as are sewage treatment pipes and communications equipment. What was an urgent concern at the time the equipment was installed is now a reality as crews continue to comb through tar balls and oil from beaches and marine reserves from Huntington Beach to Dana Point.
Shell Oil Co. tried to address the early complaints. The company paid $ 71 million for drilling rights and was looking to begin production with a consortium of business partners. Early estimates suggested a return of 25,000 barrels of oil per day for at least 20 years.
But the Beta Unit, as its location was called, was in the so-called Separation Zone: the middle separator for the north and south lanes for container ships and oil tankers that enter and exit the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
“Aids to navigation will be installed and maintained as needed by the Coast Guard,” the company wrote in its 1978 development plan, adding that “the structures will have a beneficial effect as aids to navigation.”
But the Coast Guard disagreed. It joined the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn. Objecting and saying that she would prefer not to build platforms in the area. “We recognize, however, that this is unrealistic in line with the national interest,” said Rear Adm. Robert L. Price.
National interest was then an economic interest. The beta unit was developed when the United States became aware of its vulnerability due to its reliance on imported oil. In October 1973, a cartel comprised mainly of oil exporters from the Middle East imposed an embargo on nations believed to have supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
Inflation skyrocketed and a two-year global recession set in, prompting the Home Office to open up the southern California coast – from Point Mugu to Dana Point – to offshore oil operations in 1974.
The news, which came five years after an explosion on an oil rig in the Santa Barbara Channel that had tarred the coast with at least 2 million gallons of crude oil, surprised even oil managers because of its enormous size. Approximately 7.7 million acres with an estimated production value of at least 5.5 billion barrels were available for lease.
As one writer noted at the time, “Many claim that the environmental movement of recent years began on the oil-soaked beaches of Santa Barbara. Many claim that it died when the energy crisis was born. “
Protests followed (emails to President Ford, a rally in Laguna Beach that claimed 200 spectators), and Orange County became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit demanding Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach stop selling the lease.
But the sale, held at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Los Angeles, happened on December 11, 1975. (The opening offer for a property south of Santa Rosa Island was made by California Citizens for Political Action, who presented officials in protest to the Bureau of Land Management with $ 1,800 in coins and $ 1 bills.)
Similar outrage was sparked two years later when the Home Office announced a second sale of nearly 1.1 million acres offshore. By the time these deals opened in 1979, Shell Oil Co. had begun fabricating the skeleton for its platforms in the Beta unit, which barged into Long Beach from Malaysia at the end of the year.
Shell Oil Co.’s plan for the beta unit was ambitious. Executives would later describe the facility as “the largest and most advanced offshore drilling rig ever built”.
Dade County, Florida, motorists line up at a Miami gas station, a scene that played out across the state and across the country when dealers reported low gasoline levels on December 29, 1973.
(Associated Press)
Platform Ellen was designed as a drilling platform tasked with producing oil from the first five wells that tapped the oil reservoir and spanning the Palo Verde and Newport-Inglewood earthquake faults. Platform Elly was the production platform. The two facilities would be linked by a 200-foot bridge.
Finally, a third platform, Eureka, was added, which gives operators the potential to drill 480 holes.
An 18-mile pipeline would deliver the oil to the Shell Oil Co. terminal in Long Beach, a route preferred over alternative landings in Huntington Beach and Seal Beach. According to the 1978 production plan, the pipeline should be designed to withstand movement caused by ocean currents in the worst case scenario, a 100-year storm.
“Stability is achieved by properly designing the weight of the submerged pipeline,” the document says. The pipeline would also be designed to withstand “earthquakes and other dynamic effects, dead loads and surges”.
The only part of the pipeline that needed to be buried was in the Long Beach breakwater.
The complex started production in January 1981, delivering 700 barrels of crude oil per day for the first month. By this point, the United States had weathered a second energy crisis caused by a decline in oil production after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and in Washington, DC, the Reagan administration began lifting restrictions on oil and gas production in the country .
When the Eureka platform went online in 1985, The Times paid a visit. “Because operations are so quiet,” noted the reporter, “the Eureka appears to be more of an anchored research vessel than an oil production facility.”
“In contrast to the dirty oil rigs and pumps of older generations, Eureka is so clean that many workers only get their hands dirty when they reach for additional food in the well-stocked cafeteria.”
In 1999, however, the luster of this once “state of the art” complex had faded. Two oil leaks were discovered on a corroded pipeline that carried oil, water and gas from the Eureka platform to Elly, first in late spring and then in autumn. More than 2,000 gallons of oil spilled into the ocean and reached as far as Crystal Cove in the south.
The beta unit was now owned by Aera Energy, a Bakersfield-based oil and natural gas company that is co-owned by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Shell Oil Co. is located years ago. Aera has been fined $ 48,000 for incorrectly calculating its leak detection system.
A year after the leak, the Coast Guard and Department of Transportation raised a 20-year concern about the location of the three platforms and moved westward the shipping routes that had sandwiched them between them. An announcement in the federal register states that the change will “reduce the likelihood of collisions and grounding, especially in the case of ships with the deepest drafts that require considerable leeway”.
“In addition, the oil platforms will no longer be in the … separation zone, which increases the safety of the platforms and ships passing through.”
Twenty years earlier, Shell Oil Co. officials praised the remoteness of the Beta Unit when they campaigned to build their oil rigs.
“We expect the people on the beach to look like dots on the horizon,” said the Shell Oil Co. spokesman.
Today, with the fate of the beta unit at stake, those points on the horizon – and the line connecting them to the shore – are more noticeable than ever to the folks who work on the beach to clean up the last of the pollution.
The Times employee Ian James contributed to this report.
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