House of Representative Committee on Energy and Commerce
Subcommittee on Energy and Power
Testimony on “Oversight of Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 and Related Issues”
Dianne M. Black, Assistant Director Planning and Development, County of Santa Barbara, California
July 14, 2015
Summary of Remarks:
Information regarding the limited County authority over the Plains All American Pipeline that failed on May 19, 2015
Santa Barbara County’s experience in review of oil and gas projects, including associated pipelines
Santa Barbara County’s review of the whole of a project under the California Environmental Quality Act
Oil Company applicant’s inclusion of state of the art leak detection and spill prevention technology, including automatic shutoff systems, in their project descriptions
Review of major pipelines in the County and their leak detection and spill prevention systems, including automatic shutoff systems
Good morning, Chair Whitfield, Ranking Member Rush, and other members of the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to testify this morning. My name is Dianne Black and
I am the Assistant Director of the Planning and Development Department for the County of
Santa Barbara in California. I have been involved in the emergency response, permitting and recovery for the Refugio Oil Spill, which was the result of a ruptured pipeline onshore in the
County. I have also overseen the permitting of oil and gas facilities in the County for nearly 20 years, and have been involved in other oil spill responses, including the Torch oil spill from
Platform Irene in 1997. I am appreciative of being invited here to share the experiences of Santa
Barbara County in the review and permitting of oil and gas projects and associated pipelines.
Within the Refugio Oil Spill Response, I may be a decision-maker again, for either Emergency
Permits or other permits. If that occurs, I will need to approach each permit application on a case-by-case basis. As a practical matter, this means that today:
I can provide you with general information; but
I cannot discuss how I might act on a particular permit application before I review that
application, including review of the public comment that our County’s land use codes
include within the process for emergency permits;
With respect to the pipeline in Santa Barbara County that recently failed, the County of Santa
Barbara entered into a settlement agreement with Celeron Pipeline Company in 1988 concerning the presumption that the County is preempted by federal law from regulating the design and operation of that pipeline. That precluded the county from inspecting operations by and most permitting of what is now know as the Plains All American Pipeline, the line central to the
Refugio Spill.
For the past decade or more, the County has not prescribed to oil company applicants the construction and safety systems required for inter and intra-state pipelines. Instead, subsequent to changes to federal law in 2002, the County has evaluated oil and gas projects, including the associated pipeline systems, in their entirety as is required under the California Environmental
Quality Act. The federal Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002 does not preempt local jurisdictions in California from their obligations under CEQA to study the potentially significant environmental effects of the whole of a project, including the potential environmental effects from oil spills. Working with oil company applicants, this has resulted in oil companies in Santa
Barbara County routinely including state of the art leak detection and spill prevention technology, including automatic shutoff systems, in their project descriptions which are then analyzed under CEQA. Pipeline systems which include automatic shut off systems minimize the potential impacts from oil spills, including biological, hazardous materials and risk, air quality, and recreational impacts, that would be expected to occur as a result of a spill.
Within the CEQA process, the County of Santa Barbara does not dictate what equipment oil companies must use in their pipelines in order to minimize impacts from oil spills. Instead, it is the oil companies themselves -- through their own engineers -- who determine what technology to build into pipeline projects in order to minimize impacts from oil spills.
Automatic shutoff systems rely on pipeline sensors which detect changes in pressure and flow which indicate when there may be a problem in the pipeline. When pressure or flow anomalies are detected, the system automatically shuts down the pumps and valves associated with the pipeline to limit the potential release of oil. Automatic shutoff systems are distinguished from remotely operated systems by the fact that automatic shutoff systems do not require human action, decision-making or intervention to shut down the pipeline system. In other words, there are preset parameters which, if triggered, result in a pipeline system being automatically shut down without any human action. To be clear, the Plains All American Pipelines, both Line 901 which is the subject of the spill and Line 903, to which it connects, do not have automatic shutoff systems.
With the exception of the Plains pipelines, all of the major transmission pipelines in the County are equipped with automatic shutoff systems. These include all of the pipelines that transport oil and gas from the offshore platforms to facilities in Santa Barbara County: Platform Irene; the three Point Arguello platforms; the three ExxonMobil Platforms; Platform Holly; and, the numerous platforms offshore the City of Carpinteria.
Additional pipelines within the County that are equipped with automatic shutoff systems include:
Line 96 which transports oil from the Ellwood onshore facility to Las Flores Canyon; Line 300, the onshore length of the pipeline from Platform Irene to the Lompoc Oil and Gas Plant and on to the Santa Maria Refinery; the Sisquoc Pipeline which transports oil from the Sisquoc Pump
Station to the Santa Maria Pump Station; and the permitted but not yet constructed Foxen Petroleum Pipeline that will transport oil from the Cantin Tank Battery to the Sisquoc Pipeline at
Garey. Again, all of these automatic shutoff systems were incorporated into the project description for individual projects by oil company applicants prior to environmental review.
That concludes my prepared comments. I’m happy to answer questions at the appropriate time in this hearing.
Attachment: Santa Barbara County Oil and Gas Map
Arroyo Grande n LUIS OBISPO 8 SAN g a Conoco Phillips C Lin OUN e e Santa Maria Conoco Phillips TY c Refinery Summit
O Y r Twitchell T e N t 166 a Reservoir U
W All American Pipeline O
y C
r
Greka/Santa Maria a d n Asphalt Refinery N Lion Rock u e Unocal o t Guadalupe R B 101
a Battles E Unit - A e ERA t t 166 a K t S All American Pipeline S / l Conoco Phillips a E&B Natural Resources r 1 Sisquoc Pipeline e Mussel Point Cuyama
d e Sa nta New Cuyama F Cuyama Solar Array Point Maria Conoco Phillips Sal Santa Maria Garey Facilities and Support Offshore Oil and Gas Leases Point Sal Conoco Phillips * Orcutt Orcutt Sisquoc Pipelines State Leases Unit - AERA Conoco Platform 33 Developed Casmalia Phillips c Pipeline Marine terminal Undeveloped i (Crude Only) f a B Oil-spill containment vessel Proposed PXP a n t a r b i S a Vandenberg Sales r a c Gasline C Refinery Federal Leases a Purisima o 135 u Developed Point Los n Gas processing plant P Alamos t y Undeveloped PXP Air 101 All American Pipeline Oil separation and treatment plant PXP Pipeline Vandenberg PXP/Lompoc Lease Unit Boundary Pipelines Village Oil and gas separation, treatment Surf Oil & Gas Plant and gas processing plant Ecological Preserve & Buffer Zone Mission PS Hills Pump stations Federal/State Water Boundary 437 Force Los Olivos Point 438 Lompoc Storage tanks <500,000 bbl Channel Islands Nat'l Marine Sanctuary Bndy Pedernales 441 Ballard 8g Line Unit Storage tanks 500,000 to 1,000,000 bbl Point 246 Coastal Zone Boundary 440 PXP Pedernales Lompoc Base Santa Ynez Onshore drill site
d Wind Energy x Irene Buellton
m Project Alternative Energy . 444 Lake s Point Helisupport
e Solvang
s Arguello
a C Cachuma
e
l PXP - o a 1 Crew and light support supply base d st Wind Energy Solar Energy e Tranq. a
p l
o T l Ridge ranquillon PXP/Gaviota ExxonMobil/Popco e (consolidation site) Soil remediation v Ridge 154 e Unit CalResources/ d Las Flores Canyon n Z (consolidation site)
u o Proposed Directional Drilling n AERA Proposed facilities shown in red. e e
v 450 451 o All American Arco/ m Hidalgo Shell/Gaviota e PAPCO/PANGL Coastal Dos Pueblos Facilities under abandonment shown in yellow.
r Pipelines Terminal 3 Pipeline 2 AAPL
7 New production from existing facilities shown in purple.
0 316 Venoco/ Las Flores
3 Point Arguello Harvest Gaviota
1 SL 421 0 315 State Beach Refugio Ellwood
2 Pt. Conception Unit - PXP El Capitan Recommissioning Hermosa State p Government Point AAPL Venoco/ a Beach State Beach 101
M Montecito Mr. Clean III ter Gaviota Goleta Santa 192 s Wa Naples Carpinteria
e o i te
t a c V i St
l Venoco o i 421 Barbara E
n Isla
c Venoco Carpinteria N e a Paredon V Vista T F Loon 193 189 U s 192 Campus Point Point
a 3120 R 8g 188 187 150 A G 190 Venoco La Conchita L in Ellwood & e 191 C 195 194 326 Hondo 1824 Carone l Mr. Clean I i Venoco Marine Terminal 3150 O O U \ Rincon
p Harmony 3242 Dos Cuadras/ N
a Point 329 Holly 429 T M Y 7911 Exxon Rincon s B 1466 e Heritage C A i 180 461 Rincon Island t 181
i 183 182
l 410 i Federal Ecological c 3133 427 a 145
F l Preserve Santa Ynez Unit - ExxonMobi ffer Zone Sun 166 s Bu Venoco Pitas a Hillhouse 240
G Point Torch 241 4000
&
l i Hogan S
O t \ a y Houchin t g e
r
e Habitat n 346 234 Henry Ventura E Ba W \ anta rba g S ra 8 a g
n i Li te p tas Point Unit ne r p Pi Dos Cuadras a C 735 Pipeline M h an Dos Cuadras n Venoco 215 e 217 3314 Mandalay l 216
al Marin ation e Sanctuary Oxnard ds N 8g Santa an Lin Isl e Gilda el Grace Clara Santa Barbara County nn Santa Barbara County a h C 209 Unit Port Federal/S 208 tate Hueneme Boun dary ( 3 Naut ical Gina Mi Energy Division Map les) Gail 205 204 203 202 Map produced by Santa Barbara County Miles Planning & Development - July 23, 2013 0 1 2 3 4 5 10 15 Santa C eneme ruz Is Point Hu land Unit
Sunset - Tranq. Point Arguello Ridge