Officials find natural gas leak at Greka facility, oil spill swells to 67,000 gallons

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

Less than a month after 67,000 gallons of crude oil spewed into a dry creek bed at a North County Greka Energy Facility, a state Fish and Game official on Saturday discovered a pipe at a different Greka facility that was leaking natural gas.
Santa Barbara County Fire officials said the leak was discovered on a four-inch pipeline that stretched several-thousand feet around the Greka Ucal oil and gas facility, which is located at 6527 Dominion Rd.


“It is unknown how long the pipeline had been leaking,” said Captain Eli Iskow, a spokesman for the County Fire Department. “Firefighters found that there were currently no detectable levels of any toxic gases escaping along with the natural gas.”
Iskow said a “stop-work order,” which essentially forces the closure of the facility until it can comply with safety codes, was issued on Saturday.
The Fish and Game official reported the leak to the fire department at 11:43 a.m. When firefighters arrived on the scene, Iskow said a Greka employee was trying to stop the leak.
He said the Fish and Game officer also showed firefighters a small oil spill at another location at the same facility, which is also under investigation.
Saturday’s natural gas release is the latest in a string of incidents that have plagued Greka facilities, the largest of which was the 67,000 gallon oil spill on Dec. 7.
That spill occurred at a Greka processing facility at 6084 Palmer Rd. Fire officials said the cause was a faulty pump, which was supposed to recirculate oil back into the ground once a holding tank was filled. When the pump failed, Iskow said an alarm should have notified Greka employees, but it also failed.
When the holding container became full, oil began to flow onto the ground, where it made its way into a seasonal creek and traveled a half-mile down stream before it was noticed.
The spill was originally estimated to be 800 barrels, or 36,000 gallons, but as the cleanup effort progressed, Fish and Game officials said the number grew beyond 67,000 gallons, or roughly 1,600 barrels. At that number, the Greka spill is about 10,000 gallons more than spilled into the San Francisco Bay last month when the marine freighter, Cosco Busan, collided with the Bay Bridge.
Iskow said 67,000 gallons is the amount of crude oil Fish and Game officials had vacuumed up from the ground as of last Wednesday when the cleanup effort was 95 percent finished.
In mid-November, three separate incidents at Greka facilities in a span of a week spilled a combined 7,000 gallons of oil onto the ground, which prompted officials to temporarily close one processing plant.
The thread that ties all of the incidents together, according to County Fire officials, is the deteriorating condition of Greka equipment.
In the case of Saturday’s leak, it was a rusty, pressurized pipe that had reportedly been patched back together before.
“There was evidence of several other recent repairs and several older repairs in this section of pipeline stretching for several thousand feet,” Iskow said, noting that the “stop-work order” was issued in part due to the “degraded and unsafe condition.”
But oil spills and gas releases handled by the County Fire Department are only a small part of Greka’s laundry list of violations.
Terry Dressler, director of the County Air Pollution Control District, told the Daily Sound in a Dec. 10 interview that since 1999 Greka has been issued 250 air quality violation notices. During that same time, Dressler said Greka has paid the county $500,000 for air quality fines alone.
Dressler said Greka racked up 65 air quality citations in 2006, which far exceeds any other entity.
The spills have evoked outrage by some local political officials, who say if Greka cannot operate without catastrophic spills, they shouldn’t operate at all.
The most outspoken critic of Greka in recent weeks has been Assemblyman Pedro Nava, who vowed after the oil spill, to draft legislation that would tighten the reigns on Greka and other oil and gas companies.
After touring the Greka facility where the spill occurred two weeks ago, Nava wasn’t shy about criticizing the dilapidated state of the company’s equipment.
“It’s a disaster,” Nava said after his tour. “This is a New York based company with a Fifth Avenue address that has world-wide operations and can’t spend money for new equipment in Santa Barbara County. It’s unacceptable.”
Nava, who is Chair of the Joint Committee on Emergency Services & Homeland Security, announced on Friday that he plans to hold a briefing on Jan. 4 at the David Gebhard Public Meeting Room to address the recent spills. Assemblyman Jared Huffman, who serves as the chair of the Committee on Environmental Safety & Toxic Materials, will also attend the briefing.
In a letter sent to the director of California Fish and Game on Dec. 11, Nava called for those at fault to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
“When the investigation is complete,” Nava wrote. “If it is determined that Greka was again in violation of any local, state, or federal laws, I urge that they be held accountable, referrals where appropriate made and the responsible parties be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including civil and/or criminal penalties.”
Attempts by the Daily Sound to reach Greka spokesman Mike Stoker for comment were not successful.