A barge equipped with a crane and a large claw arrived off the coast of Tar Pits Park in Carpinteria last week. Beneath the waves, divers cut sections of pipe while the claw reaches into the depths, actively removing lines from the sea floor.
These pipes once transferred oil from the offshore platforms Hilda, Hazel, Hope, Heidi, Grace, and Gail to the Carpinteria Processing Facility, which Chevron is currently in the process of decommissioning. Part of the oil company’s plan is to remove three bundles of pipes from the shore to three miles out in the water, where the sea transfers from Carpinteria City and Santa Barbara County ownership to state jurisdiction.
According to Carpinteria Community Development Director Nick Bobroff, all three of the bundles of pipe had been flushed and capped, one bundle even being filled with cement, prior to being ripped from the seafloor.
Onshore, the removal of above ground infrastructure has been completed, including the deconstruction of Tank 861, which once held up to 217,000 barrels of oil. The facility’s decommissioning has reached the next stage: removing the network of pipelines buried beneath the ground. Once all infrastructure has been removed, Chevron will conduct soil testing to collect data that will inform the remediation process to follow…