Mobil Pleads No Contest in 1991 Valencia Oil Spill

LOS ANGELES —  Mobil Oil Co. pleaded no contest Monday to a criminal charge involving a 1991 oil spill from a chronically leaky pipeline in Valencia and agreed to contribute $200,000 to unspecified environmental projects.

Although the plea entered in Los Angeles Municipal Court resolved the criminal case against Mobil, the oil giant still faces a state civil suit over the January, 1991, pipeline rupture, which spilled nearly 75,000 gallons of sticky crude into the Santa Clara River.

It was the seventh major accident in five years on the 90-mile underground line, which carried heated crude oil from fields in Kern County to Mobil’s Torrance refinery. Mobil had already begun replacing the line at the time and has since completed the job.

Officials said the spill fouled a 15-mile reach of the Santa Clara River in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, killed 186 birds and damaged the habitat of two endangered species--the unarmored three-spine stickleback, a fish, and the least Bell’s vireo, a bird.

In exchange for the plea to a misdemeanor charge of polluting a waterway, prosecutors agreed to dismiss three other water-pollution and hazardous-waste charges. The four counts carried maximum penalties of $497,000.

“This is a very good settlement,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Erica Martin, a prosecutor with the district attorney’s Environmental Crimes Division. She said prosecutors will present a spending plan for the $200,000 at a formal sentencing May 25.

Mobil spokesman Barry Engelberg called the settlement “a constructive resolution,” since “funds that would have been spent on litigation can now be put to an environmentally beneficial use.”

Engelberg said Mobil spent about $10 million cleaning up the spill and believes it “acted responsibly at all times, both in the operation of the pipeline, then in the cleanup of this accidental rupture.”

Mobil still faces potential civil claims of millions of dollars in a parallel action by the California attorney general.

Technically, the civil lawsuit--which involves different state and federal laws from the criminal case--has yet to be filed. In a stipulation signed in January, 1992, lawyers for Mobil and the state attorney general agreed to waive a one-year statute of limitations. That preserved the rights of both sides to litigate the case following completion of a comprehensive study of environmental damage.

Although the study is not yet finished, Deputy Atty. Gen. Michael W. Neville said Monday that his office “recently . . . started talking settlement with Mobil.”

However, Neville said a settlement will require “a seven-figure remedy”--or at least $1 million.

Neville said Mobil would be liable for civil damages under the state Fish and Game Code, the federal Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and the California Water Code. Under the water code alone, Neville said, Mobil could be liable for damages of more than $1.4 million--or $20 for each of the more than 70,000 gallons of oil that spilled.

Engelberg said he had no information on the status of the civil case.