Greka charges sabotage as reason for spills

 

Recent spills at sites in northern Santa Barbara County operated by Greka Energy Corp. were the result of sabotage, according to a spokesman for the company.

The charges were made by Robert O’Brien, a Greka attorney, during a Jan. 15 board of supervisors hearing focusing on potential remedies or punishments the county might impose in the wake of a string of serious environmental mishaps for which the company has been blamed.

The board of supervisors unanimously agreed to modify the county’s Petroleum Ordinance after hearing Greka’s charges of sabotage as reasons for the recent spills.  

“These spills didn’t take place because Greka is a poor operator; they took place because someone went in and vandalized our operations,” said O’Brien, who is part of the team of lawyers representing Greka. “The biggest problem we face here today is that there is a vandal at large at best or an eco-terrorist or industrial saboteur at worst.”

Greka hired former FBI agent Tom Parker, who has released findings alleging that an unknown suspect sabotaged its facilities. Reported incidents include tampering with pumps, disconnecting alarms, creating electrical shorts in wires and tampering with valves.

 

Greka wants to improve and has improved dramatically, according to O’Brien, but there is additional work to do. Someone certainly has targeted Greka, he said, and he said that he perceived motivations for a person or persons to commit sabotage that would be specific to Greka.

The sabotage charge and self-congratulatory plaudits appeared to raise skeptical eyebrows among the supervisors, and 1st District Supervisor Salud Carbajal seemed to ridicule O’Brien’s assertions during later questioning.

“During our testimony we’ve heard that Greka failed to do many things, and I want [O’Brien] to address if that was sabotage or negligence,” he said.

More than 100 people filled the board hearing room and the overflow room of the Betteravia Government Center to hear the county board of supervisors’ response to the recent rounds of Greka oil spills.

 

County and state officials, including the county fire department, the Air Pollution Control District, California Fish and Game and other county staff presented reports to the board about Greka’s activities and compliance.

“I have noticed the inability of them to do cleanup; they are still far below every other company that I have worked with. They are just not able to do the job effectively,” said Josh Curtis of California Fish and Game.

Greka’s latest rounds of spills and its tumultuous history prompted the Jan. 15 hearing. The oil company has spilled more than 165,000 gallons of crude oil and has leaked explosive and flammable natural gas in six different incidents dating back to Nov. 12.

 

In addition to being issued stop-work orders from the county fire department for the latest spills, the company has been cited 203 times by the Department of Fish and Game, cited 287 times by the Air Pollution Control District, sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay nearly $2 million in fees and settlement costs for various health and safety violations.

O’Brien refuted some of the county’s findings presented in its staff report and claimed that the numbers were off and the presented information was misleading. He also disagreed with the comparison of Greka and other operators, saying if the stats were broken down, anyone could see that Greka is not the number one offender.

“We’re not the worst operator in this county and there’s been a misleading picture painted. There were simply some mistakes in the calculations,” he said. “I think if you take out the incidences of sabotage that are now under investigation you see a very different picture and that Greka is trying.

 

“Let me make another critical point: The reason why the county knows the amount of barrels that were spilled is because Greka reports the number.

“When you look at the county’s list of spills, almost every single one of them are classified by ‘unknown,’ because we and the county don’t know what the other operators have spilled,” he added.

In response to Greka’s violations and in the attempt to clarify the county’s authority in dealing with oil companies that have a history of non-compliance, county staff recommended that the board of supervisors adopt five resolutions that would amend and add to the current Petroleum Ordinance.

 

“We’re asking supervisors to make modifications to the existing ordinance,” said Ron Cortez, deputy county executive officer. “All of these changes are centered around making sure that high risk offenders are provided with additional oversight.”

In an unanimous vote, the board agreed to amend the existing ordinance to increase fines and fees for high risk offenders, oil companies that have an historical record of non-compliance; to ensure that high risk companies don’t simply abandon oil sites by requiring them to provide the county with collateral; and to allow the county to hire a third party at company expense to conduct inspections. The board also asked county staff to clarify the county’s permit process.

Since the county does not have clear guidelines to follow when it issues permits and requires oil operators to renew expired permits, oil operators can operate without renewing their permits.

 

According to the Fire Department, Greka has 18 operations that require permits and only 3 of those operations have valid and up-to-date permits.

Carbajal criticized the county’s ineffectiveness in dealing with expired permits.

“I can assure you that I will be working with changing this issue; We need to look at what our options are to change a system that doesn’t work,” he said.

Supervisor Janet Wolf, 2nd District, while expressing appreciation for county staff’s efforts to amend the current ordinance, alluded to the county’s lax enforcement as a failure of authority.

“We can have ordinances and chapters and unless we decide that we’re going to spend the resources to enforce, it doesn’t mean anything,” she said.

“I wonder why we haven’t expended the resources in the past. The fact that the county hasn’t taken the steps is surprising.

“Ordinances are fine, but we need to get in there and do something to stop it. I’m very frustrated,” she said.

County staff will review the board’s requests, meet with professionals in the oil industry and come up with draft ordinance amendments and present them to the board of supervisors for final approval in 60 days.

In the meantime, Greka will continue to clean up its spills and its other operating facilities will remain open.