Plains All American Pipeline submitted an application on Tuesday with Santa Barbara County’s Energy Division to replace Line 901, the pipeline that ruptured and leaked 142,000 gallons of crude oil in 2015 in what became nationally known as the Refugio Oil Spill .
Since Line 901 — which spans from Las Flores Canyon to the Sisquoc pump station — was emptied and filled with inert gas, production ceased at the seven oil platforms off the Santa Barbara coast. One of those platforms — Venoco’s Platform Holly — is in the process of being plugged and abandoned entirely.
Now, Plains is proposing to replace the 24-inch pipeline with a smaller one, which would vary from 12 to 20 inches in diameter. The new proposed pipeline — known as Line 901R for “replace” — would be “thicker than required,” particularly along the coast, Plains spokesperson Karen Rugaard said in an interview. Plains is also proposing to replace the connecting pipeline, Line 903, which spans from Sisquoc to Pentland Delivery Point in Kern County. (Santa Barbara public affairs firm Terrain Consulting is representing Plains; they also worked with Venoco.)
