Regional Oil Spill Cleanup Center to Open

PORT HUENEME â€”  A consortium of major oil companies today will dedicate the nation’s first regional oil cleanup center designed to handle catastrophic spills off the California and Hawaii coasts.

Officials acknowledged that the oil spill response center will not be fully operational until next summer but said they could offer limited help to state and regional agencies mopping up a moderate spill.

At a ceremony today, oil cleanup officials will unveil the $70-million facility recently completed near the docks at the Port of Hueneme. It is the first of five regional centers to be built at strategic ports around the country that would be able to tackle a 9-million-gallon spill, about the size of the one caused by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska three years ago.

“It’s a time to pause and reflect on the progress that we’ve made and where we have to go,� said Skip Onstad, general manager of the nonprofit Marine Spill Response Corp. “We now can stop concentrating on building the facilities and start concentrating on readying our people to respond to a spill.�

Employee training already has begun at the facility on one of the world’s largest oil skimmers, which operate like giant vacuuming machines, aboard the chartered 160-foot Taylor Tide. The Port Hueneme center will get its own 210-foot vessel, the California Responder, in January.

The corporation, financed by 41 companies that transport and drill for oil in U.S. waters, is spending more than $900 million to open five response centers nationwide to comply with the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, said John R. McLaurin, a corporation spokesman.

That law, passed after the Valdez incident, requires oil companies to develop contingency plans for large spills or face a prohibition from operating in U.S. waters.