Out of the Past
History Lessons
1969
Santa Barbara Oil Spill
|
On January
28, workers on Union
Oil's
Platform A in
the Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field
off the coast of Southern California
were pulling a drilling
tube out of one of the wells to replace a drill bit when disaster
struck. The pressure differential created by removing the tube was not adequately compensated for by pumping mud back down into the 3,500-ft-deep well, causing a drastic buildup of pressure and, quickly thereafter, a blowout. Natural gas, oil, and mud shot up the well and into the ocean. The pressure also caused breaks in the ocean floor surrounding the well, from which more gas and oil escaped. The blowout caused an oil spill that lasted 10 days and gushed 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil into the channel and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara County.
Many have viewed the disaster as a key event in the emergence of the modern environmental movement. "The blowout was the spark that brought the environmental issue to the nation's attention," said Arent Schuyler, an environmental studies lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara in a 1989 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "People could see very vividly that their communities could bear the brunt of industrial accidents. They began forming environmental groups to protect their communities and started fighting for legislation to protect the environment." |
 Black Tide The Santa Barbara Oil Spill and Its Consequences by Robert Olney Easton Delacorte Press, 1972 |
1979 Oil Spill Gulf of Mexico |