The Refugio oil spill occurred on May 19, 2015 along the Gaviota Coast in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. It contaminated one of the most biologically diverse areas of the West Coast of the United States with of crude oil. The corroded pipeline that caused the spill closed for almost 11 years, resulting in financial impacts to the county estimated as high as $74 million since it and a related pipeline remained out of service for three years. The cost of the cleanup was estimated by the company to be $96 million with overall expenses including expected legal claims and potential settlements to be around $257 million.
Hundreds of animals along the coast were coated with thick crude oil and many died. State parks and beaches located along the Gaviota Coast were temporarily closed. While much smaller than the oil rig blowout that resulted in the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, this incident may have greater long term effects due to its potential impact on four state marine protected areas. Due to the unique characteristics of the area, it is one of the most studied marine environments in the United States.
The oil spill, north of Refugio State Beach, originated in a diameter underground pipeline designated Line 901 owned by Plains All American Pipeline. Crude oil produced by offshore platforms was transported from onshore receiving plants to another pipeline that transported the oil inland for processing. The 28-year-old pipeline was not equipped with an automatic shut-off valve and was eventually shut down by control operators in Midland, Texas when they were notified of the leak from parties who visually located the spill.
A subsidiary of ExxonMobil acquired the pipeline from Plains All American Pipeline in 2022 as three platforms owned by ExxonMobil used the pipeline to transport the oil after it arrived onshore. A new company, Sable Offshore Corp., was formed to own and operate the pipelines and the Santa Ynez Unit which includes the offshore oil platforms and an onshore processing facility.
Background
The area was one of the earliest locations in California developed for offshore oil and gas production. Crude oil and natural gas produced by offshore platforms is processed at onshore receiving plants before being transported to distant refineries. The source of the spill was Line 901, a owned by Plains All American Pipeline. The was constructed in 1987 along the Gaviota coast to service the crude oil produced by offshore drilling. The pipeline can transport a day and the contents are heated to as high as . Santa Barbara area pipelines are typically not heated but they are insulated to retain the oil's heat during transit. The viscous oil is also blended with natural gas liquids to allow it to flow more readily through the pipeline. Truck transportation of oil was phased out in Santa Barbara County in the 1970s because pipelines were considered a safer option.
Pipeline corrosion
Before the spill, an inspection of the 28-year-old Line 901 pipeline found extensive corrosion problems resulting in thinning pipeline walls. The pipeline did not have an automatic shut-off valve that would have been required on an intrastate pipeline as Line 901 is categorized as an interstate pipeline. Officials from Plains All American Pipeline claimed that installing a new valve would present other potential dangers. The line underwent a comprehensive internal inspection in July 2012 and since then the area where the pipe broke had been repaired at least three times. Line 903 is a much longer pipeline that transports the oil from Line 901 inland to gathering facilities and refineries. Line 903 was also found to be corroded though not as seriously.
Offshore oil production
Of the seven offshore platforms that used the line, ExxonMobil owned three: Hondo, Harmony and Heritage. After delivering their oil to onshore tanks at its Santa Ynez Unit in Las Flores Canyon, they depended on Line 901 to transport the oil from Las Flores to a pump station in a coastal canyon near Gaviota. The crude oil, known as Las Flores Canyon OCS (Outer Continental Shelf), then flowed into Line 903 as it was transported inland to gathering facilities in Kern County and on to refineries throughout Southern California. Venoco's Platform Holly located in the South Ellwood Offshore Oil Field also depended on Lines 901 and 903. The Holly platform is about offshore from the Coal Oil Point where about a day comes from natural seeps. Line 903 was also used to move the production from platforms Hidalgo, Harvest and Hermosa of Point Arguello Unit owned by Freeport-McMoRan to the ConocoPhillips refinery in Santa Maria.
Gaviota Coast
The narrow coastal terrace where the spill took place is primarily used for recreation and cattle grazing. Local land use agencies have kept oil processing facilities to a minimum along the lightly populated coastline where much of the land is held in agricultural preserves under the Williamson Act and used for avocado and lemon tree orchards. The parks and agricultural areas on this narrow coastal terrace are situated between a rugged coastline and the Santa Ynez Mountains of the Los Padres National Forest. The nearest city is Goleta, about down the coast. US 101 and the main coastal railroad line both parallel the coastline and the Hondo and Harmony oil rigs can be easily seen offshore in the Santa Barbara Channel from the highway or railroad.
The Gaviota coast with its Mediterranean climate is considered unique for the biodiversity of ocean life. The unusual species found here are the result of the cold water from the north meeting the warm water from the south. The annual migration of about 19,000 Gray whales through the Santa Barbara Channel was in progress at the time of the spill. They may come as close as from the shoreline.
Oil spill
Detection and response
On Tuesday May 19, 2015, the pipeline operators in Midland, Texas remotely detected pressure anomalies and shut down Line 901 at 11:30am. The Santa Barbara County Fire Department initially responded around 11:40am to a report of a strong smell coming from the area. Fire crews found the crude oil flowing from a drainage culvert that passed under U.S. 101, and into the Pacific Ocean and reported the leak to authorities. Local pipeline workers did not know about the leak until they were notified by the state parks staff around noon that there was oil in the water. After struggling to find the leaking pipeline, workers located Line 901 where it had leaked and flowed into the storm culvert around 1:30pm. Clean-up efforts did not begin for 16 to 18 hours.
Company officials in Bakersfield who were responsible for notifying the National Response Center did not do so until 2:56pm. The Center, staffed by United States Coast Guard officers and marine science technicians, is the sole federal point of contact for reporting all hazardous substances releases and oil spills. An oil spill triggers mandatory federal notification requirements in a timely manner but company officials said they were unable to contact employees on site as the employees were busy dealing with the immediate demands and distractions of the situation.
By the next day, the state parks agency closed Refugio State Beach and El Capitán State Beach. Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency. Santa Barbara County also declared a state of emergency. The Santa Barbara emergency management team eventually recommended that the Board of Supervisors keep the proclamation of local emergency intact till until May 2016. They anticipated that a significant winter storm could bring up submerged oil and the situation could be reassessed in the spring.
Ecologically sensitive area
The oil quickly spread along of the coastline from Arroyo Hondo Creek to the west to El Capitán State Beach on the east. The slick reached four marine protected areas that have ecological or cultural significance: Naples, Kashtayit, Campus Point and Goleta Slough. Culturally significant land and artifacts to the Chumash people are also found in this area.
An immediate concern of environmentalists was the potential use of chemical dispersants. To keep big slicks from washing ashore, dispersants can be used to break the oil into small droplets that disperse throughout the water column. There are significant concerns about the health effects of the dispersants and the effects on aquatic life. Coast Guard officials overseeing the cleanup indicated that no chemical dispersants were being used but did not immediately rule the use of them out.
Size of spill and cleanup efforts
Plains All American Pipeline stated on May 20, 2015 that at the time of the spill the pipeline was operating at maximum capacity of per hour. They reported on August 14, 2015, that a total of crude oil had leaked from the pipeline.
Preliminary reports estimated that to of oil was spilled into the ocean through a highway drainage culvert adjacent to the broken pipeline. The amount of oil leaked was later revised to over . A Unified Command (ICS) was established consisting of local, state and federal agencies. This included the United States Coast Guard, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Department of Fish and Wildlife including the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, and the Santa Barbara Office of Emergency Management together with the responsible party, Plains All American Pipeline. The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration ordered the pipeline operator to provide them with the ruptured pipe for metallurgical testing in order to establish the condition of the pipe when it failed. All the oil in the pipeline had to be cleaned out before the section could be removed to determine if corrosion, pressure or a series of failures led to the rupture in the pipeline.
Scientists from multiple disciplines at the University of California, Santa Barbara and elsewhere began collaborating immediately after the spill. Based on lessons learned from studies of earlier spills, and using refined computer models, they predicted the spill spread and dispersion, including impacts on Los Angeles area beaches. They used this information to provide guidance to cleanup agencies and to monitor the effects on the ecosystem.
Some of floating containment boom had been deployed to contain the oil by the next day. Boats and helicopters identified patches of slick in the ocean so cleanup vessels could mop up the oil. More than a dozen vessels corralling and skimming the oil from the water were working in the days immediately following the spill. Three days after the spill more than 650 workers and 17 boats were cleaning the shoreline, gathering up an oily water mixture from the ocean, and hauling away more than of oil-contaminated soil, sand and vegetation from the coastal bluff. A month after the spill, efforts continued to clean the portion of shoreline that was most heavily damaged. The sandstone cliff face along with large boulders that were splashed by the oil coming out of the culvert were difficult to clean. While sandy beaches farther south were inundated with tar balls, the beaches and rocky shoreline south of the spill had been drenched with a slick of fresh crude oil that had not been in the ocean long enough to be altered into tar balls by the wind and waves.
Tar balls
Days after the spill, tar balls began washing ashore on beaches down the coast in nearby Summerland and then farther down the coast in Ventura county. Although the source of these tar balls could not be immediately confirmed, the pipeline company sent workers to clean them up. Crews cleaned up coin-sized clumps of oil along the Rincon shoreline such as Faria, the beaches in the City of Ventura including San Buenaventura State Beach, and the extensive oceanfront of the Oxnard Plain.