Shell Oil to Outline Plans to Modernize Site, Cut Pollution

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  When a major industry in the city--Shell Oil Co.--made two Top 20 lists, city officials were not amused.

The lists belong to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and they rank the worst air polluters in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

AQMD officials rated Shell’s Huntington Beach facility 13th among the 20 biggest emitters of reactive hydrocarbons in the four-county area and 12th among the 20 largest releasers of oxides of nitrogen. Both emissions combine to form ozone, the main component of smog.

Now city officials want Shell to clean up its act, and they have scheduled an unusual “study session” involving Shell representatives for next Monday at city hall. At the meeting, City Council members said, Shell is expected to outline modernization plans for its Huntington Beach site. The session is open to the public.

“I’ve been concerned about this issue for some time,” Councilman John Erskine said. “This study session is long overdue. We’re hoping that Shell, if they modernize their facility, will be a better neighbor in the future than it’s been in the past.”

Shell officials said they requested the special meeting with the City Council to present plans for a cleaner and better-looking operation in Huntington Beach.

“We’ve been working on an extensive modernization program ever since we took over the lease of this oil property in 1986,” said Bill Gibson, community relations manager for Shell’s West Coast Production Division. Gibson said Shell is installing new equipment to help improve air quality at the Huntington Beach facility.

Shell’s local operations produce 10,000 barrels of oil a day, plus 3 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, Gibson said. The company runs an offshore oil facility, Platform Emmy, and a 1,500-acre crude-oil production site in a sensitive area of the city between Golden West and Warner avenues on Pacific Coast Highway.

The environmentally fragile Bolsa Chica wetlands is on the north end of the oil-production site, and the city’s massive downtown renovation area is to the south.

“We’re concerned about air quality,” Mayor Thomas J. Mays said. “This is especially important to us since we’re a beach community.”

Mays, however, said he is pleased with Shell’s response to city concerns about air pollution and the need for better landscaping at their facilities.

“I’d have to say that Shell has been a good neighbor in this,” Mays said. “They took the initiative themselves to have this study session and to brief us about what they plan for the area.”

Shell took over the lease of the Huntington Beach site from Phillips Oil Co. Shell’s Gibson, though careful not to criticize the former tenant, said the facility was not up to Shell’s standards at the time and improvements had to be made in air quality.

The company’s plans include converting internal combustion oil pumping units to electricity, and consolidating tanks and related processing equipment.

AQMD officials said last week that Shell’s Huntington Beach operations joined several oil producers and refineries in Los Angeles on the Top 20 list of stationary air polluters for 1990.

“But being on that list does not mean that they have violated any law,” said Bill Kelly, an AQMD official. “What the list means is that . . . these are the 20 largest sources of emissions” in the area.

The list, which is based on tons of pollutants released into the air in 1988, indicated that Shell’s Huntington Beach facilities emitted into the air 336 tons of reactive hydrocarbons and 1,001 tons of oxides of nitrogen.

Two other industries in Orange County are on the list--B. P. Furniture of Santa Ana, which emitted 449 tons of reactive hydrocarbons into the air, and Southern California Edison in Huntington Beach with 836 tons of oxides of nitrogen.

Shell was the only industry in Orange County to be on the list for both hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen.

But Gibson vowed that Shell’s planned improvements would improve air quality at the Huntington Beach site. “We’re indeed interested in being a good neighbor and productive corporate citizen in Huntington Beach,” Gibson said. “We’ve been working on this modernization virtually since taking over the lease.”