The Santa Barbara oil spill occurred in January and February 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, near the city of Santa Barbara in Southern California. It was the largest oil spill in United States waters at the time. It remains the largest oil spill to have occurred in the waters off California.
The source of the spill was the January 28, 1969, blow-out on Union Oil's Platform A, located from the coast in the Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field. Within a ten-day period, an estimated of crude oil spilled into the Channel and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara County in Southern California, fouling the coastline from Goleta to Ventura as well as the northern shores of the four northern Channel Islands. The spill had a significant impact on marine life in the Channel, killing an estimated 3,500 seabirds, as well as marine animals such as dolphins, elephant seals, and sea lions. The public outrage engendered by the spill, which received prominent media coverage in the United States, resulted in numerous pieces of environmental legislation within the next several years, legislation that forms the legal and regulatory framework for the modern environmental movement in the U.S.Clarke, K. C. and Jeffrey J. Hemphill (2002) The Santa Barbara Oil Spill, A Retrospective. Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Editor Darrick Danta, University of Hawaiʻi Press, vol. 64, pp. 157–162. Available The Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Retrospective
Background Because of the abundance of oil in the thick sedimentary rock layers beneath the Santa Barbara Channel, the region has been an attractive resource for the petroleum industry for more than a hundred years. The southern coast of Santa Barbara County was the location of the world's first offshore oil drilling, which took place from piers at the Summerland Oil Field in 1896, just from the spill site.California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR). California Oil and Gas Fields, Volumes I, II and III. Vol. I (1998), Vol. II (1992), Vol. III (1982). p. 681. PDF file available on CD from www.consrv.ca.gov. An economic boom accompanied the development of the Summerland field, which transformed the spiritualist community of Summerland into an oil town in just a few years.Baker, pp. 62–63
Oil development in the Channel and adjacent coastline was controversial even from the earliest days, as by the late 19th century the city was beginning to establish itself as a health resort and tourist destination with dramatic natural scenery, unspoiled beaches, and a perfect climate. In the late 1890s, when the Summerland field began to expand much closer to the city of Santa Barbara, a crowd of midnight vigilantes headed by local newspaper publisher Reginald Fernald tore down one of the more unsightly rigs erected on Miramar Beach itself (in 2010 the location of a luxury hotel). In 1927, the discovery of oil west of Santa Barbara led to the development of Ellwood Oil Field. This caused the city to be bracketed on east and west with oil fields, the new one a bonanza and the depleted Summerland field a largely abandoned, blighted waste.Ira Leifer et al., "Oil emissions from nearshore and onshore Summerland: Final Report." OSPR Technical Publication No. 07- 001. State of California Department of Fish and Game – Office of Spill Prevention and Response. 1700 K St., Sacramento, Calif. 95814. In 1929, the Mesa Oil Field was discovered within the city itself, on the blufftop adjacent to present-day Santa Barbara City College. Residential construction in the vicinity of the Mesa field halted, as oil presented easier and faster money to the land developers. Oil derricks sprouted on the hilltop within easy view of the harbor, on narrow town lots intended originally for houses. While local protests were vocal, they failed to shut down the oil development, as there was a city ordinance at the time specifically allowing drilling on the Mesa. The oil derricks only went away when production on the small Mesa field abruptly declined and ended in the late 1930s.DOGGR, p. 280
Improved technology gradually allowed drilling farther and farther from shore, and by the middle of the 20th century drilling was being carried out near Seal Beach, Long Beach, and in other areas on the Southern California coast from human-made islands built in shallow water close to shore. Nearer to the site of the oil spill, the first drilling island was built in 1958 by Richfield Oil Company. Named Richfield Island, now Rincon Island, it was constructed in of water near Punta Gorda, between Carpinteria and Ventura, to exploit the offshore portion of the Rincon Oil Field; this island, now owned by Greka Energy, remains in active production.
In the Santa Barbara Channel, geologists realized that the anticlinal trend which held the extremely productive Rincon and Ventura Oil Fields did not end at the shoreline, but extended underneath the Channel. Prospectors for oil sought ways to drill in deeper water. Seismic testing under the Channel began shortly after the Second World War, in an attempt to locate the suspected petroleum reservoirs deep underneath the ocean floor. The testing was noisy and disruptive; explosions rattled windows, cracked plaster, and filled the beaches with dead fish; local citizens as well as the Santa Barbara News-Press vocally opposed the practice, which continued nonetheless, but after a delay and under tighter controls. Yet the testing had revealed what the oil company geologists had suspected, and the population feared: the probable presence of sizeable exploitable petroleum reservoirs in relatively shallow water, approximately deep, within reach of developing ocean-drilling technology.
A series of legal and legislative actions, however, delayed actual oil platform construction and drilling until the mid-1960s, as the Federal and State governments fought for ownership of submerged lands. Congress passed the Submerged Lands Act in 1953, which granted to the states all lands within of shore, known as the tidelands. After two more years of wrangling with state legislature, Santa Barbara arrived at a compromise with the oil companies, creating a no-drilling zone in the Channel long and wide adjacent to the city of Santa Barbara. However, several major oil fields were found within state waters on either side of this zone, and the State granted leases in these fields beginning in 1957. Development of these resources commenced, with the first offshore oil platform – Hazel – being built in 1957.Archives of the State Lands Commission: 1992 application for abandonment of Platform Hazel Platform Hilda, adjacent to Hazel, was erected in 1960. Both platforms tapped into the Summerland Offshore Oil Field, and were easily visible from Santa Barbara on a clear day. Platform Holly, in the offshore portion of the Ellwood Oil Field about west of Santa Barbara, was emplaced in 1965.Platform Holly information : County of Santa Barbara Energy Division
Development of leases in the federal waters was next. As the technology became available, and after the seismic surveys of the Channel had revealed that the oil was probably there, the federal government put the portions of the Santa Barbara Channel outside of the tidelands limit up for lease. This was possible because a 1965 Supreme Court decision finally settled the competing claims on the submerged lands outside of limit, giving them to the federal government. The first lease sale took place on December 15, 1966, after a notice of the impending sale in the Federal Register went unnoticed by local officials. A consortium of oil companies, including Phillips, Continental, and Cities Service Oil Company, was awarded the first lease after paying over $21 million for the rights to drill on approximately of ocean floor in the Carpinteria Offshore Oil Field. The rig the three companies emplaced – Platform Hogan – was the first oil platform offshore of California in Federal waters. It became operational on September 1, 1967.Carpinteria Offshore Field: Platform Hogan , at the Minerals Management Service On February 6, 1968, a total of 72 leases went up for bid. A partnership between Union Oil, Gulf Oil, Texaco, and Mobil acquired the rights to Lease 241 in the Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field. Their first rig on that lease, Platform A, went into position on September 14, 1968, and commenced drilling.
Local hostility to the oil industry had been growing during the period from 1966 to 1968, despite assurances from the oil industry and the federal government that the wells would be installed and operated safely. On June 7, 1968, of crude oil spilled into the sea from Phillips' new Platform Hogan, in spite of the oil company's assurances that such a thing would not happen, and the assurances of Stewart L. Udall, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior; and in November, a local ballot referendum was successful in preventing the construction of an onshore oil facility at Carpinteria.
Oil spill
Blowout on Platform A
Platform A was positioned in of water, from the shore at Summerland. It had 57 slots for wells from which it could drill directionally into the oil reservoir from different angles. At the time of the spill, it was one of twelve platforms already in the waters off California, and one of two operated by Union Oil in the Dos Cuadras field. Four oil wells had already been drilled from the new platform, though not yet put in production. Work on the fifth was under way.
On the morning of January 28, 1969, workers drilling the fifth well, A-21, reached its final depth of , attaining this depth in only 14 days. Of this depth, only the top had been fitted with a steel conductor casing; the rest was to be fitted with one once the drill bit was out. After the workers pulled the drill bit out, with some difficulty, an enormous spout of oil, gas, and drilling mud burst into the air into the rig, splattering the men with filth; several of them attempted to screw a blowout-preventer onto the pipe, but against a pressure of over , this proved to be impossible; all workers except for those engaged in the plugging attempt were evacuated, due to the danger of explosion from the abundant natural gas blown from the hole; finally, the workers tried the method of last resort, dropping the remaining drill pipe – almost long – into the hole, and then crushing the top of the well pipe from the sides with a pair of "blind rams", enormous steel blocks slamming together with force sufficient to stop anything from escaping from the well. It took thirteen minutes from the time of the initial blowout to the time the blind rams were activated. Only then did the workers both on the rig and in boats nearby notice the increase in bubbling at the ocean surface hundreds of feet from the rig. Plugging the well at the top had failed to stop the blowout, which was now tearing through the ocean floor in several places.
Normally, an offshore well would have been built with at least of conductor casing, as required by federal regulations at the time, as well as approximately of a secondary, inner steel tube known as the surface casing. Both of these protective casings were intended to prevent blowout of high-pressure gas out of the sides of the well bore into and through adjacent geologic formations. At Well A-21, this is exactly what happened. Since there was no casing below sufficient to stop the immense pressure of gas, once the well was plugged at the rig, the oil and gas left the well bore, ripping right through the soft sandstones on the floor of the Santa Barbara Channel, and spewing a huge amount of oil and gas all the way to the water surface where a thick bubbling oil slick quickly began to grow and spread.
Expansion of the spill