In a case of seriously bad timing for ExxonMobil, the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office just finalized a settlement with the Bakersfield-based trucking company responsible for a 4,500-gallon oil spill into the Cuyama River not far above Twitchell Reservoir nearly two years ago.
While the spill hardly qualifies as the biggest in county oil history, it might well be the most politically inopportune. Its settlement announcement comes just a few weeks before the county supervisors are scheduled to decide the fate of ExxonMobil’s proposal to send up to 78 tanker trucks a day from its plant at Las Flores Canyon to a facility in Kern County by way of Highway 166. The spill in question has been seized upon by environmental critics of the plan as Exhibit A in their argument as to why Highway 166 is not a safe route for such an undertaking.
The settlement, while relatively modest in terms of dollars and cents, calls attention to the proposal’s most evident weakness and will make it that much harder for ExxonMobil to garner the votes necessary to reopen its Gaviota plant.