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.
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