Posted on 06/10/2015 6:35:27 AM PDT by thackney
A Santa Barbara County official has rejected a proposal by Exxon Mobil to send a fleet of 6,720-gallon trucks on as many as 192 daily trips on U.S. 101 while the pipeline the company normally uses is out of commission after last month's oil spill.
Dianne Black, assistant director of planning and development for Santa Barbara County, shot down the plan to use as many as eight trucks per hour, 24 hours a day, to transport oil from an Exxon facility near El Capitan State Beach to refineries as far away as San Luis Obispo County.
Crude oil typically moves from Exxon Mobil's three offshore platforms through a 10.6-mile pipeline owned by Plains All American Pipeline. That pipeline ruptured May 19 and spilled as many as 101,000 gallons of crude oil along the Gaviota coast.
Since then, Exxon has reduced its daily oil production by nearly two-thirds and stored its crude in tanks at its Santa Ynez Unit in Las Flores Canyon near U.S. 101.
The production of crude oil and natural gas would halt once storage space ran out, Exxon claimed in its application for an expedited "emergency" permit.
The company argued that ceasing production would potentially jeopardize essential public services by cutting off the company's deliveries to Southern California Gas Co.
Black said Tuesday that there was no evidence that the large gas network run by Southern California Gas would be unable to serve customers without natural gas from the Exxon facility.
In her rejection, Black noted that the evidence presented by Exxon "does not support a finding that an emergency exists."
The company cannot appeal the decision and would have to apply for a non-emergency permit. That process would take months, requiring environmental review and public hearings, Black said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Make the idiot idealists walk.
So Santa Barbara county controls Hwy US 101 now? Emphasis on US.
So put it in tankers, sail it through the Panama Canal to refineries in Texas and Louisiana and charge California a premium to get it back. Double the charge for Santa Barbara County destinations.
Nah! The cheaper and easier solution is to ship the crude to China, where they may refine it unrestricted by the pesky folks in Santa Barbara and the EPA... Then they can send it back to us by the containership loads in the form of prepackaged fake plastic novelty dogshit that lines all the shelves of all the aisles at all the Wal*Mart's across the continent.
Don't believe me? Read the Obamatrade bill.
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