The Danny C. commercial dive work boat arrived off the Summerland shore on Sunday night to begin the capping of two leaking wellheads.
Commercial divers, hired by InterAct of Ventura, are working to seal off leaking Treadwell and NorthStar oil wells. The entire operation is expected to take two weeks, according to the California State Lands Commission, but leaders of the project are hopeful that a third oil well will be sealed in that duration.
“We are so pleased to see how smoothly things are going that we hope to get a third leaker on this trip,” said Hillary Hauser, executive director of Heal the Ocean Santa Barbara.
The Curtin Barge work boat is expected to arrive from Long Beach on Sunday or Monday loaded with all of the necessary equipment to cap the wells. Workers will place piling pipe over the wellhead and then drive the pipe into the ocean floor to seal the wellhead.
Each pipe will be cleaned out and filled with cement to stop the migration of hydrocarbons that could fill the well. After, a steel plate will be welded on top of the piping to act as a second barrier.
Heal the Ocean advisory board member Harry Rabin has been working closely with InterAct engineers to map out the entire operation.
Summerland is home to the first offshore oil field in the world, Hauser said, and the leaking wells wreak havoc on the sandy Summerland beaches.
Heal the Ocean Santa Barbara worked closely with the State Lands Commission to put this project into motion and cap the leaking wells.
“We got involved in this project in 2017 because we felt like there had to be some action to get state money to cap these wells,” Hauser said.
In January 2017, Heal the Ocean contracted with Aqeuos Subsea, an internationally recognized offshore dive company, to conduct an aerial survey of the offshore Summerland oil field, which began seriously actively leaking in 2014.
With the passage of Senate Bill 44, authored by 19th District state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, in 2017, $2 million would be given a year for seven years to plug abandoned oil wells in California.
The first oil well in Summerland, Becker Well, was capped in February 2018. Heal the Ocean worked hard with the State Lands Commission to put two budget years together, providing $4 million to cap Treadwell and NorthStar.
“The big thing for us was to get the money necessary to stop these leaks rather than complain and keep letting it happen,” Hauser said.
If the operation continues to go smoothly, the Duquesne oil well will be capped and seen as an additional victory for the project.
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
