Images from the March 10 edition of the Telegram-Tribune, volunteers are washing oil from the feathers of a grebe hoping he will be one of the 25% who survive. Another photo shows oil muck being scraped from a Santa Barbara beach. Photos were by David Ranns
January 29, 1969
Offshore oil drilling has been touted recently as the solution to high oil prices. Some political statements sound a lot like an old Exxon commercial. The United States currently consumes over 25% of the world oil output.
The Central Coast has strong reasons to have a love-hate relationship with oil.
In the early 1900′s the oil industry brought the area some of the first good paying non-farm jobs. No one ploughs with a mule anymore or reads by whale oil lamps.
In the 1960′s cartoon tigers made our cars run better and uniformed attendants wiped down our windows.
Somewhere along the way the perception oil companies soured.
One could argue the galvanizing moment was the Santa Barbara oil disaster of 1969.
Six miles off of Summerland, 3500 feet below the ocean floor natural gas pressure was pushing under platform A.
Union Oil, author of the biggest spills in San Luis Obispo County (Avila Beach, Guadalupe Dunes), was the owner of the drilling platform.
Investigation revealed Union Oil had been cutting corners. The oil giant got permission from the U.S. Geological Survey to use casing pipe thinner than federal and California standards. The more strict state standards only applied inside the three-mile coastal zone.
When drilling mud fell below the safety margin, the pipe ruptured and broke an east-west fault in five places releasing oil and gas for 11 days. Later fault breaks would continue the spill.
Sea birds, seals, dolphins and beaches were coated with black goo.
Quoting Telegram-Tribune staff writer Gilbert Moore in an article from February 15, 1969:
“It churned and bubbled to the surface through a sea floor fissure for 11 days, turning the channel into a vast oil slick.
It coated miles of peerless beach with sludgy slime.
It captured loons, sea scooters, grebes-hundreds of them-in a cocoon of death.”
In addition to the environmental damage, it was a public relations disaster for Union Oil (now Unocal). Driving distance from a media capital of the United States, Los Angeles television crews and photographers transmitted images across the world of dying birds and volunteers throwing straw on the beach to mop up the oil.
Fred L. Hartley, president of Union Oil offered this reaction, “I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.”
The disaster united ecology organizations, and brought many into the political mainstream. Earth Day would be founded in the wake of the event.
The Environmental Protection Agency was created December 2, 1970. I somehow doubt Union Oil sent them a cake.
Oil and environment have been such a large part of the history of the area I have added a categories to the blog for organizing future posts.
A later post on the topic is here.
Related posts:
As a journalist who has covered the offshore oil controversy in San Luis Obispo County for more than a decade, I would say that there is no doubt that the Santa Barbara Channel oil spill was a watershed moment in the county’s history regarding oil development. In 1996, the Minerals Management Service issued a report titled “San Luis Obispo County: A Major Switching.” The switching in the title refers to the turnabout in public opinion in the county toward offshore oil drilling.
Until then, many county residents had economic or nostalgic connections to the oil industry’s long history in the county. The Santa Barbara spill changed all that. “By most accounts, news of the 1969 Santa Barbara Channel oil spill greatly alarmed citizens in San Luis Obispo County,” the report states. A year after the spill, county supervisors voted 3-2 in favor of a ban of oil drilling in state waters which extend three miles out.
At the same time, demographics in the county was changing. Many new residents from the Los Angeles area said they moved here to get away from oil platforms and refineries. Other long-term residents said the spill showed that offshore oil drilling is not without risk. “There is some danger to it,” they were quoted in the report as saying.
All the more reason to drill again offshore. The ’69 spill set up laws and regulations that are heavily monitored, resulting in safety measures and equipment requirements that nearly eliminate spills such as the Santa Barbara disaster.
Hurricane Katrina hit hundreds of oil platforms in the gulf, with CAT-4 and higher winds and waves, yet not a single platform reported any spillage, or damage that could result in a spill.
That is the legacy of Santa Barbara, safe drilling methods and equipment. There is currently more natural seepage, than all the platform spills combined…….how do you think they “found” oil in the SB channel to begin with?
Other events that changed the perception of oil companies would be the shortages and gas lines that would strike in later decades along with the Exxon Valdez spill.
SSG David brings up a point that is currently being argued on the internet, that Hurricane Katrina did not cause an oil spill. For another view click here.
Few phrases capture a reader’s attention faster than “cocoon of death.”
I worked cleaning up birds as a part of G.O.O. (Get Oil Out!) after the 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara, California! Across from the Santa Barbara Bird Preserve. Tell me “Drill, Baby Drill!” Humph.