Pacific Pipeline Company dropped its efforts to build a replacement crude oil pipeline through Santa Barbara County, and apparently will focus on restarting the existing lines it purchased from Plains All American.
The company filed a withdrawal letter with the county this week saying, “We find the potential environmental impacts associated with the major construction of a second pipeline unnecessary and avoidable.”
Andrew Craig of PPC wrote that restarting the existing pipeline is the least environmentally damaging alternative.
“Recent inspections and analysis affirms this initial view that it would not make sense to continue the permitting process when the existing pipeline can be responsibly restarted,” he wrote.
“Lastly, there is also a high degree of local permitting and business uncertainty created by recent actions that has impacted investment commitment as well as timing assurances to customers,” he wrote.
Plains filed the replacement pipeline application in 2017, which proposed a smaller-diameter pipeline mostly along the same route as the existing pipeline. It has been under environmental review for several years.
The pipeline from offshore platforms to out-of-county refineries has been shut down since the May 19, 2015, Refugio Oil Spill. Investigators found that Plains failed to detect the leak and the pipe corrosion that caused it.
A Superior Court jury found owner and operator Plains All American Pipeline guilty of knowingly discharging crude oil into state waters.
Since then, Plains has tried to restart its pipelines by repairing or replacing its pipeline.
In the absence of an operating pipeline, ExxonMobil has tried to restart its offshore oil production by trucking the oil, which the county denied.
PPC purchased the pipeline and tried to get safety valves installed so it would meet state requirements for operating.
The Board of Supervisors failed to take action on that.
In a statement about the application withdrawal, Environmental Defense Center deputy chief counsel Maggie Hall said that “building new oil infrastructure is reckless, to say the least. However, restarting a corroded and compromised pipeline that already caused one massive oil spill is even worse.”
PPC attorneys have stated in recent hearings that corroded pieces of the pipeline have been repaired or replaced, including the section that caused the Refugio Oil Spill.