Line 901 of the Plains All American pipeline network starts out at 24 inches in diameter at Exxon’s Las Flores Processing Facility on the Gaviota Coast, runs west along the coastline for 10.6 miles, then turns north into a 30-inch main line. At mile 130, crude oil, propelled by pumps at 10-mile intervals and spinning like water through a garden hose so as not to harden into “Tootsie Rolls” per industry parlance, reaches the Pentland Pump Station in Kern County before it spiders out to refineries across California.
For the foreseeable future, however, the ruptured pipeline will remain empty, save for the stagnant oil now coagulating inside. In addition to patching the rupture that allowed an estimated 105,000 gallons of oil to spill, some of it on Refugio State Beach, Plains All American will have to fulfill a laundry list of corrective measures imposed by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).
The Corrective Action Order, an eight-page document issued on May 21, calls for purging the affected pipeline, a review of the pipe “for conditions similar to those of the Failure,” mechanical and metallurgical testing, determination of the cause of failure, and restart and remediation plans.