Mobil Oil Pipeline Ruptures 2nd Time

A Mobil Oil Co. underground pipeline ruptured Tuesday--for the second time this month--and leaked an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 gallons of water and oil onto a Sherman Oaks street and into the Los Angeles River, authorities said.

The pipe burst at 11:40 a.m. while Mobil technicians were putting it through a high-pressure water test for weak spots, authorities said.

The rupture left gooey oil along the 4400 block of North Sherman Oaks Avenue, including Sherman Oaks Circle, and on the surface of the Los Angeles River. Property damage was minimal, authorities said, but they estimated it will take the rest of the week to clean up the mess.

“When we arrived, oil was bubbling up through the cracks in the street,” said Inspector Ed Reed of the Los Angeles Fire Department. “Initially, it was almost pure crude. Then the water came up and washed it down.”

Oil Content Unknown

Alfonso Berumen, duty officer for the county Health Department’s hazardous materials unit, said it had not been determined how much of the spill was crude oil.

“Because it was a mix, there is no way to estimate how much was oil,” Berumen said.

However, Assistant Fire Chief Alan Schroeder said it appeared that about 500 gallons of the estimated 50,000 to 60,000 gallons spilled was oil.

Mobil officials downplayed the incident.

Tim Salles, Mobil operations manager, said the rupture occurred during hydrostatic testing of the 12-inch-wide pipeline that runs 180 miles from Bakersfield to a Mobil refinery in Torrance. He said that most of the oil was emptied from the pipeline during the test and that water was pumped through it at 25% greater pressure than the maximum operating pressure.

Weak Spots

Salles said the test is designed to find weak spots in the line. He said Mobil tests the line every two years, instead of every five years as required by the state fire marshal’s office.

“It was not an oil leak,” Salles said of Tuesday’s rupture. “The line had been flushed with water. The bulk of what leaked was test water. There could not have been a large amount” of oil in it.

Much of the mixture washed down the street and into a storm drain that funneled it to the Los Angeles River, about a mile away.

Authorities said the spill was far less of a problem than the estimated 90,000 gallons of crude oil that leaked from the same pipeline Sept. 10, less than a mile away on Ventura Boulevard in Encino. About 8,000 gallons of the oil from that initial rupture went into the river.

Mobil had cleanup crews standing by during the pipeline test. The crews were able to quickly set up a vacuum truck and oil-absorbing “booms,” or floating dikes, on the river at the storm drain’s entry point, Fire Department officials said. At eight other points on the river, between Sherman Oaks and Long Beach, booms were already in place because of the earlier leak.

“This time the spill is controlled, and we are in pretty good shape,” Schroeder said. “We are not looking at the same kind of problems we had before.”

Patrick Moore, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game, said it is unlikely that the new spill will damage the river. He noted that much less oil leaked into the river than in the last spill and that cleanup efforts started sooner. But he said the river had not yet rebounded from environmental damage caused by the earlier leak.

Meanwhile, residents of the latest leak area were left with moats of thick oil on the street in front of their homes.

“What a mess, and it smells awful,” North Sherman Oaks Avenue resident Pat Glanville said. “It is absolutely mind-boggling that this could happen again. When it happened the first time this month, I thought, ‘Well, at least it didn’t happen here.’ Now it does. Where will it happen next?”