If not for the seriousness of the matter at hand — the eventual restarting of Line 901, the pipeline that caused the Refugio Oil Spill in 2015 — the arguments this morning at the Planning Commission over installing 16 automated safety valves could have simply been appreciated for the artful rhetoric rolled out by the participating attorneys. Ultimately, what seemed like a beneficial solution to pipeline spills was instead found by three of the five commissioners to lead to the resumed flow of crude oil along the Gaviota Coast — without environmental review and apparently before Line 901 was replaced.
First up for the group appealing the application for the valves was attorney Barry Cappello, a master of the startling simile and the seeming stemwinder. Cappello delivered a head-spinning polemic over who owned the pipeline and could therefore do the work, much less submit the application — either Plains All American Pipeline, which was responsible for the rupture and let the pipeline rot into a state of “Swiss cheese”; ExxonMobil, which apparently now owns the pipeline; or a company called Sable, represented by a mysterious “Mr. Flores,” who seems in line to purchase the pipeline in co-ownership with Exxon. But the Planning Commission should not agree to new valves until the owner was in the room, Cappello argued, “so they can tell you this won’t happen again, that the pipeline would not reopen until it was completely fixed. They can put the automatic shutoff valves in then.”
What the audience learned by the end of the hearing was that if the valves were installed, the company could request to resume the flow of oil from the State Fire Marshal, a permit process the public and county could not comment upon. As well, the rupture of Line 901 was due to pipe failures — from age and corrosive soils — and the line ran across private properties that some landowners believed no longer had valid pipeline leases. That lawsuit is headed for trial, said Cappello, on the theory that pipeline closure for “three, four, five years” invalidated the leases.