Some seventy-five miles northwest of Los Angeles, about six miles offshore southeast from Santa Barbara, seven oil platforms stretch like sentinels in a sweeping arc along what's known as the Venture Avenue Anticline in the Santa Barbara Channel. Near the third well from the west, they say, a few barrels of gooey, black crude percolate to the surface each day. The oil companies say it's a naturally-occurring phenomenon from the web of cracks and fissures that craze the fault-riddled sea floor. Others, however, say the seepage is the lasting echo of an event that changed forever the way America thinks about environmental protection.
The Santa Barbara area has an oil-rich history, with extensive fields both on- and off-shore. Offshore oil drilling, some historians say, was invented near here; an oil well at the end of a pier drilled in the opening years of the twentieth century is alleged to be the world's first offshore well. In February, 1942, a Japanese submarine shelled an on-shore oil storage facility in the Elwood Oil Field a dozen miles west of Santa Barbara, the first military attack on the U. S. mainland since the War of 1812. In the post-war years, though, oil drilling in the area was poised to make a giant leap into uncharted territory.
By 1947, advances in drilling technology enabled oil companies to drill wells from offshore platforms. In 1953, Congress enacted legislation authorizing Federal leasing of submerged Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lands. In 1966 the first federal OCS lease sale was conducted and consisted of the sale of one lease, number 166. Phillips, Continental, and Cities Service oil companies purchased the lease and installed Platform Hogan in 1967, making it the first platform in federal waters offshore Santa Barbara County [Eastern-most of the seven pictured -- ds]. The second federal OCS lease sale was conducted on February 6, 1968. Seventy-two Channel leases were offered for bidding. Union Oil of California (later Unocal) in partnership with Gulf, Mobil, and Texaco purchased lease number 241 in the Dos Cuadras field.
County of Santa Barbara: Blowout at Union Oil's Platform A
Seven months later, in September of that year, Union Oil placed platform A on its new lease and began drilling. By January 14, 1969, with four wells drilled, it had started to drill its fifth.
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Like many such disasters, there was no one thing that, in and of itself, caused the debacle. Forty-one years ago this week, on the morning of January 28, 1969, a series of simple events, compounded by mistakes and misjudgments, abetted by safeguards stretched thin by a bending of regulations that otherwise might have helped mitigate the event, cascaded into a full-blown catastrophe.
The problems began on an offshore drilling rig operated by Union Oil called platform Alpha, where pipe was being extracted from a 3,500 foot deep well. The pressure difference created by the extraction of the pipe was not sufficiently compensated for by the pumping of drilling mud back down the well, which caused a disastrous pressure increase.
As the pressure built up and started to strain the casing on the upper part of the well, an emergency attempt was made to cap it, but this action only succeeded in further increasing the pressure inside the well. The consequence was that under extreme pressure a burst of natural gas blew out all of the drilling mud...
Keith Clarke and Jeffrey Hemphill, The Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Retrospective
Natural gas under pressures estimated between 1,100 and 1,700 psi shot the drilling mud 90 feet into the air and continued to blast a mixture of mud and gas out the end of the pipe. A full-fledged blow-out was under way. As attempt after attempt to stop the highly flammable gas failed, desperate platform workers finally clamped two steel rams together over the well opening and stopped the flow. But below them, in the sea bed 188 feet beneath the platform, all was not well.
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The stage for what was going on below had been set some time before. With four wells already drilled without incident, Union Oil approached regulators at the United States Geological Service Survey (H/T KORfan) and requested a waiver of some rules for the fifth well
On wells as deep as A-21, federal regulations called for a standard minimum of 300 feet of conductor casing -- the first string of protective casing normally set beneath the ocean floor -- and a blowout-prevention device atop it. Similarly, these regulations called for approximately 870 feet of surface casing -- a secondary string set to greater depth and generally installed when exploratory operations suggest the presence of a high-pressure gas-zone. Yet Solanas [USGS employee with final authority for the application of drilling regulations - ds] -- exercising his legitimate statutory discretion -- had authorized Union to drill A-21 without installing any surface casing at all. Moreover, he had permitted Union to run its conductor casing down to only 238 feet beneath the ocean floor.
Nash, A. E., Dean E. Mann and Phil G. Olsen, Oil Pollution and the Public Interest: A Study of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill, quoted in County of Santa Barbara: Blowout at Union Oil's Platform A
The platform, five miles from the nearest land, was beyond the three-mile limit and thus beyond the reach of California state regulators who might have nixed the federal regulators' acquiescence to the oil company request.
When the pressure in the well spiked, the conductor casing ruptured, releasing the highly pressurized natural gas into the rock formation around it. The intense pressure had fractured and opened up already-present fissures and fault lines -- literally cracked the earth --and now oil was being forced out of the split well casing and through the newly-formed cracks and ruptures in the ocean floor, up to 800 feet from Platform A. The sea appeared to boil as the oil from the blowout churned the surface of the ocean around the well.
There would be no Red Adair heroics for this mess, no quick cures, no simple solutions. At nearly 200 feet below the surface of the ocean, a blow-out of this type and magnitude was virtually unprecedented. It would take a week-and-a-half of desperate trial-and-error experimentation before workers were finally able to stop the worst of the leak with a chemical mud forced into the cracks. In the eleven days the oil flowed unabated, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil belched up from deep in the earth's crust and spread out over 800 square miles of ocean. Oil washed up on a 35-mile strip of shore (basically the entirety of the shoreline visible in the satellite image above) and all four of the Channel Islands (several miles off the bottom of the satellite image).
News people and their cameras descended on the California coast to record the spectacle as hundreds of volunteers scrambled to implement whatever crude measures could be devised to try to rescue the thousands of birds and other wildlife trapped in the sludge. The Santa Barbara oil spill became front-page, lead-item news in newspapers and on TV news programs across the country.
As images of sludge-coated birds flopping on the shore awaiting rescue by oil-smeared, grim-faced Samaritans from all walks of life were being imprinted on the cerebrums of every American with a pair of eyes, the president of Union Oil stepped forward to make a Very Important Statement.
New Feature! A 'How regulation came to be' Sidebar
Kossacks, let's talk. What do you think? When one of the Big Guys, one of the Very Important Captains of Industry, one of those self-assured, immaculately groomed denizens of the mahogany-paneled executive suites, the dapper gentleman adorned in a suit that cost more than your first car, dripping confidence like an afternoon cloudburst in the tropics steps up to that massive cluster of microphones festooned with placards bearing the collective names and call letters of every media outlet known to man and utters his Profound Pronouncement...
Do you think there's ever a time when, as soon as the words leave his mouth, that his bladder threatens to instantly and involuntarily evacuate in front of God and everyone; a time when his brain immediately starts scrambling trying to formulate a plan, some plan, any plan to put that toothpaste back in that tube; a time when the little voice in the back of his head shrieks, "Oh shit! We're fucked!" and dives for cover behind the medula oblongata?
Or are they just so-o-o-o sure of themselves, so absolutely convinced of their unquestioned right-ness that it's absolutely inconceivable to them that anyone could possibly find any fault whatsoever with their impeccable reasoning when they deliver a turd of the magnitude Union Oil Company president Fred L. Hartley served up when he said,
I don't like to call it a disaster, because there has been no loss of human life. I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.
Keith Clarke and Jeffrey Hemphill, The Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Retrospective
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The clean-up effort began almost immediately, with significant active participation from the local community. The damage was so intense and extensive that people of all age groups and political persuasions felt compelled to help in every way they could. On the beaches, piles of straw were used to absorb oil that washed on shore, contaminated beach sand was bulldozed into piles and trucked away. Skimmer ships gathered oil from the ocean surface, and volunteers rescued and cleaned tarred seabirds at a series of hastily set-up animal rescue stations, one of which was located at the Santa Barbara zoo.
Keith Clarke and Jeffrey Hemphill, The Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Retrospective
The plight of the marine and shore life in the area of the spill -- those "few birds" Union Oil president Hartley dismissed -- was particularly tragic.
People rushed to the scene to do what they could. Shorebirds like plovers, godwits and willets that feed on sand creatures disappeared but diving seabirds were hardest hit. Grebes, cormorants and other seabirds were so sick, their feathers so soaked in oil that it was easy for rescuers to catch them. Birds were bathed in Polycomplex A-11, medicated, and placed under heat lamps to stave off pneumonia. The survival rate was less than 30 percent for those who were treated. Many more died on the beach and the detergents used to disperse the oil threatened many birds that had managed to survive the oil. The chemicals robbed feathers of the natural waterproofing used to keep seabirds afloat.
Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association: Union Oil Spill Disaster sparks a movement
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Estimates of bird deaths ranged from 3500 to 10,000. Dead fish, seals and sea lions washed up on the beach, as well as dolphins, their blowholes plugged by the gunk. The spill blocked a whale migration route, forcing them to take a wide berth out to sea to avoid the oil. Aerial surveys taken a year after the spill found only 200 grebes in an area that had previously drawn 4000 to 7000. When a second well blew out a month after the initial failure, though far less severe, the resulting release of oil only added to the magnitude of the disaster.
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The federal government, complicit in the disaster through its relaxation of existing regulations, acknowledged its significant role in the disaster. Nonetheless, the regulatory response was swift.
Following the blowout, Secretary of the Interior, Walter Hickel, ordered the oil companies to stop drilling on the OCS pending review and revision of federal drilling regulations. He also added a 34,000-acre buffer zone seaward of the existing 21,000-acre federal ecological preserve between Summerland and Coal Oil Point. Federal drilling activities were allowed to continue on the OCS in 1970, with stricter regulations. Future OCS oil and gas leasing, as well as leasing in State waters, would require a formalized environmental public review process under the newly enacted National Environmental Policy Act [the NEPA is the law that requires the federal government to hold open hearings and allow public comment on any planned development that could potentially impact the environment, and introduced grounds for the public to sue to stop such development -- ds] and the California Environmental Quality Act.
County of Santa Barbara: Blowout at Union Oil's Platform A
The California State Land Commission banned offshore drilling for 16 years, until the Reagan administration took office; the California Coastal Commission was established by voter initiative in 1972 (Proposition 20) and later made permanent by the legislature through adoption of the California Coastal Act of 1976; the federal government founded the Civil Applications Committee, aimed at coordinating intelligence and military systems for national emergencies; across the nation, federal and state regulations governing oil drilling were strengthened.
In previous installments of this series, we observed that early environmental laws were often weak and toothless, serving as little more than a foot in the door, establishing the federal government's vested interest in legislating on behalf of the environment and establishing a foothold from which the government could pass incrementally stricter legislation. The Santa Barbara oil spill and a companion disaster, the Cuyahoga River fire of June 22, 1969, a scant six months later, spurred a fed-up, had-enough revolt among the public that enabled legislators to undertake a quantum leap in the strengthening of environmental laws, a change that would result in the passage, not only of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, but both the 1970 Clean Air Act and the 1972 Clean Water Act, as well as spur the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the Marine Protection Research and Sanctuary Act of 1972, Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.
We mentioned in our installment on Boston's Great Molasses Flood of 1919 the role of the Really Big Judgment in changing corporate behavior. The Really Big Judgment would come to bear on the Santa Barbara oil spill:
Environmental and economic losses resulting from the spill were difficult to estimate. The tourist industry suffered in 1969; however, tourism recovered in subsequent years. A class-action lawsuit awarded nearly $6.5 million to owners of beachfront homes, apartments, hotels, and motels. Commercial and recreational boat owners and nautical suppliers were awarded $1.3 million for property damage and loss of revenue. Commercial fishers lost access to some fisheries temporarily. Union Oil also settled a lawsuit filed by the State of California, County of Santa Barbara, and the Cities of Santa Barbara and Carpinteria in the amount of $9.5 million for loss of property.
County of Santa Barbara: Blowout at Union Oil's Platform A
So many things came about as a result of the Santa Barbara oil spill that it's hard to give them all a proper accounting. I'll leave for others to inventory the dozens of nature, wildlife, and environmental policy advocacy organizations, as well as the committed individuals who advance those causes, that trace a direct line of descent from the gooey black muck of the beaches of Santa Barbara in 1969.
Instead, I'll leave you with one more piece of Santa Barbara folklore.
Senator Gaylord Nelson |
Senator Gaylord Nelson, who represented the state of Wisconsin in the Senate for 18 years, amassed an impressive record of environmental issues.
... He was the author of legislation to preserve the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail corridor, create a national hiking trails system and create the Upper Great Lakes Regional Commission and Operation Mainstream/Green Thumb, which employed the elderly in conservation projects. He sponsored or co-sponsored countless conservation bills, including the Wilderness Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and the National Environmental Education Act. In Wisconsin, his U.S. Senate legacy includes the St. Croix Wild and Scenic Riverway and the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
Wilderness.net: Gaylord Nelson
While Nelson's own account speaks only of "a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969", most other accounts make note of a visit during that tour to observe the massive volunteer mobilization at the Santa Barbara clean-up operation, which continued throughout most of 1969, a tour during which Nelson married the germ of an idea for a conservation education campaign planted in 1962 with the encouragement of then-President Kennedy, to the 'teach-in' model of the late-sixties anti-war movement to create what became the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970.
Your Green Life Segment - Earth Day
Was Santa Barbara the impetus for Earth Day? I can't really say. Like most pieces of oral tradition, and histories no one thought to record until years after the fact, the accounts differ and some critical details have become distorted, and it's nearly impossible to discern the actual facts.
But whether Earth Day is a part of it or not, the time an oil well blew out and coated the shores of Santa Barbara in a thick sludge of crude oil left a legacy that insured Americans would never view their environment in quite the same way again.
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And that, dear Kossacks, is where regulation comes from -- not from bored bureaucrats sitting in an office in Washington trying to think up ways to make life miserable and expensive for some innocent and unsuspecting businessman, but from real human suffering and tragedy brought about, all too often, by people (and sometimes regulators) who shirk what should be obvious responsibilities, who neglect basic diligence, who sacrifice safety for profit. They bring suffering on those who trust them and their products, and society adopts measures to make sure it never happens again. We have to force them, through regulation, to behave as they should have been behaving all along. That's how regulation came to be.
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Previous installments of How Regulation came to be: