Full Coverage: Santa Barbara oil spill

A Santa Barbara County homeowner is the latest party to file suit against the Texas owners of a pipeline that burst last month along the Gaviota coast, sending thousands of gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean.

Chaos and delay marked the initial hours after a pipeline burst last month along the Santa Barbara County coast, sending thousands of gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean.

El Capitan State Beach will reopen next Friday, more than a month after 101,000 gallons of crude oil gushed from a ruptured pipeline off the Santa Barbara County coast.

The rehabilitated brown pelicans waddled out of their cages and into the surf at Goleta Beach on Friday, slowly stretching their wings after a three-hour car ride from a Los Angeles care center.

Cleaning up the thousands of gallons of crude oil that spilled into the Pacific Ocean near Refugio State Beach on May 19 has cost more than $60 million, officials said Wednesday, and the figure is expected to climb as the cleanup continues.

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.

A group of U.S. lawmakers is questioning the safety record of the pipeline company responsible for last month’s oil spill along the Santa Barbara coast.

Nearly two decades ago, Plains All American Pipeline embarked on a buying spree across the United States and Canada, acquiring thousands of miles of aging pipeline.

How do you move thousands of gallons of crude a day with a key oil pipeline out of commission indefinitely?

They hit Summerland more than two weeks ago, globs of oil stinking up the beach bad enough to induce headaches.

State Atty. Gen.

Two weeks after an oil spill off Refugio State Beach, the state Senate on Wednesday approved legislation that would ban new offshore oil drilling from a nearby area in the Santa Barbara Channel known as Tranquillon Ridge.

Corrosion had eaten away nearly half of the metal wall of a pipeline that ruptured and spilled up to 101,000 gallons of crude oil along the Santa Barbara coast last month, federal regulators said Wednesday.

Alarmed by last month’s oil spill off Refugio State Beach, two lawmakers from Santa Barbara County announced Tuesday that they would propose requiring annual pipeline inspections, quicker responses to leaks and better prevention technology.

A Santa Barbara fisherman is suing the Texas owners of the oil pipeline that ruptured last month, spilling up to 105,000 gallons of crude along the coast near Refugio State Beach, for economic damages.

Three U.S. senators are raising concerns about a Texas-based company’s “insufficient� response to a pipeline failure last week that released thousands of gallons of crude into the ocean and fouled the Santa Barbara County coastline.

The owners of a pipeline that burst and spilled up to 101,000 gallons of crude along the Santa Barbara County coast expect to remove the ruptured section Thursday.

Federal authorities Wednesday issued a cleanup order to the company whose underground pipeline spilled thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Pacific last week, marring several miles of Santa Barbara County coastline.

Investigators are nearing an important step in determining what caused an underground oil pipeline last week to rupture and release as much as 101,000 gallons of crude along the Santa Barbara County coast.

Workers on Tuesday began digging up the soil around a pipe that ruptured and spilled up to 101,000 gallons of crude oil along the Santa Barbara County coast.

Oiled sea mammals brought to SeaWorld San Diego from the Refugio State Beach oil spill “remain in guarded condition,� park officials said Monday.

After days of turning away members of the public looking to help clean up in the aftermath of a large oil spill along the Santa Barbara coast last week, officials will begin training volunteers to assist in the response Monday.

Clad in white protective suits and yellow hard hats, the workers knelt below a jagged cliff-side, packing oil-saturated sand into plastic bags.

When the winds blew a certain way, Don Martin said he could smell from his Jefferson Park apartment the pungent odors coming from the Freeport McMoRan Oil and Gas oil site.

A sea lion sent to SeaWorld San Diego after being caught in the oil spill at Refugio State Beach has died, but two other rescued animals that had been covered with oil continue to receive treatment, park officials said Saturday.

A section of oil pipeline that ruptured and spilled thousands of gallons of crude along the Santa Barbara County coast could be dug up by the end of the holiday weekend, authorities said, giving them the first opportunity to determine what caused the break.

Along the coastline west of Santa Barbara last week rose an apparition from 1969, as oil defiled the surface of the Pacific, the beachside rocks, wildlife.

A section of broken pipeline that spilled thousands of gallons of oil along the Santa Barbara County coast could be dug up for inspection before the end of Memorial Day weekend, officials said Saturday.

Is Santa Barbara covered in oil? Should I cancel my kayaking trip to Channel Islands National Park?

Federal regulators on Friday ordered the company responsible for an oil spill on the Santa Barbara County coast to remove a portion of the ruptured pipeline for inspection, as scientists assessing the damage warned that the crude could harm the marine environment for years.

Efforts to clean the crude-stained Santa Barbara coastline ramped up Thursday as scientists, government officials and workers tried to get a handle on the size, extent and environmental impact of Tuesday’s oil spill.

Crews are working around the clock to clean up the site of an oil spill in Santa Barbara County that has sent tens of thousands of crude into the Pacific Ocean and left even more saturating the soil.

Plains Pipeline, the large Texas-based company responsible for the pipe that ruptured in Santa Barbara County, has accumulated 175 safety and maintenance infractions since 2006, according to federal records.

It was a scene that generations of people on the Santa Barbara coast have dreaded: Cleanup workers in white protective suits combing tar-splattered beaches, hoping to contain the damage from a crude oil spill.

The large, woodsy sign sounded a friendly warning about powerful riptides and dangerous backwash to the hordes of beachgoers who weren’t there: “When in Doubt, Don’t Go Out!�

At a rest area in Santa Barbara County along the 101 Freeway, roughly where oil spewed from a pipeline, a steady stream of travelers and residents stopped to watch the cleanup effort.

The operator of an underground pipeline that ruptured and released up to 105,000 gallons of crude oil in Santa Barbara County -- and tens of thousands of gallons into the ocean -- said Wednesday that the spill happened after a series of mechanical problems caused the line to be shut down.

On the black-splattered beach at Refugio, where a ruptured oil pipeline spilled its contents into the ocean, burly Peuyoko Perez sang in a Chumash dialect, a mournful ode to the willow and its flexibility.

As crews clean up a 21,000-gallon oil spill on the Santa Barbara County coast, local hotels say they haven’t seen any effect yet on reservations ahead of the busy Memorial Day weekend.