Pipeline Leak Spills Crude Oil on Huntington Beach Shoreline

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  A half-mile stretch of beach was closed Thursday after a pipeline leak of crude oil washed down a storm drain and about a barrel of oil contaminated the shore near Golden West Street.

Lifeguards spotted the spill--which totaled about 210 gallons--about 6:45 a.m. when oil reached the surf line, where it was whipped into a brown froth, said Martha Werth, Huntington Beach fire spokeswoman.

No injuries or damage to wildlife were reported, Werth said.

“We closed the beach as a precautionary measure,” Werth said, adding that only about a barrel--roughly 42 gallons of the 210 gallons spilled--had washed into the water.

The cause of the leak in the pipeline owned by CalResources LLC, a Shell Oil affiliate, has not been determined, a Cal-Resources spokeswoman said. About five barrels of crude oil leaked near an oil well at Walnut Avenue and Golden West Street, about a block from the ocean.

The oil traveled from the well onto the street at Walnut and Golden West, where it went down a storm drain. Some of it washed onto the beach and eventually into the ocean.

CalResources dispatched a cleanup crew that included a bulldozer, which immediately swept the oil-tainted sand into piles, where it was transferred into sandbags and removed.

“Our beach cleanup was done by 9:30 a.m.,” said Susan Hersberger, a CalResources spokeswoman in Bakersfield. “The second phase is to clean out any residual oil remaining in the storm drain, and then we will clean up the intersection at Walnut.”

CalResources owns the large oil field extending north of the corner of Golden West and Pacific Coast Highway. About 7,200 barrels of crude oil is produced a day at the oil field in Huntington Beach, Hersberger said.

She said the oil that leaked consisted of a combination of water and crude oil.

“Of that, no more than about a barrel got as far as the beach,” Hersberger said. “[Fire officials] don’t think the frothy liquid got out beyond the high tide area.”

Lifeguard Claude Panis was patrolling in the area of Golden West and the beach about 6:45 a.m. when he smelled a petroleum-like odor and discovered an oil slick at the base of a cliff off Golden West, Lifeguard Steve Davidson said.

Panis called for help and was told that firefighters were a few blocks inland repairing a broken oil pipe, lifeguards said.

Thomas Napoli, a environmental scientist with the state Department of Fish and Game, said that a combination of high tide and wave action had helped the oil to disperse into the surf.

“We will return [Friday] and dig up test trenches to see how invertebrates such as sand crabs fared,” Napoli said.

In addition to city firefighters, emergency crews responding included the Coast Guard, Fish and Game and a Huntington Beach hazardous-materials crew who were still working late Thursday to finish the cleanup.

* Times staff writer Thao Hua contributed to this report.