Santa Barbara Oil Spill (1969): The Blowout That Sparked Change

The Santa Barbara oil spill began on 28 January 1969, when a well on Union Oil’s Platform A blew out about six miles (10 km) off the coast of southern California. Over the following weeks an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil blackened beaches, harbors and wildlife along one of America’s most admired coastlines. Televised images of the disaster turned local anger into national outrage and helped give birth to the modern American environmental movement.

Background: drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel

The Santa Barbara Channel has long been rich in oil. Natural seeps near Coal Oil Point have released tar onto local beaches for thousands of years, and onshore and near-shore wells operated in the area from the late nineteenth century.

In 1968 the federal government auctioned leases for drilling in the deeper waters of the channel, beyond the three-mile limit of state control. Many residents of Santa Barbara, a wealthy city that depended on tourism and its scenery, opposed the platforms. Union Oil, with partners Gulf, Mobil and Texaco, built Platform A on the Dos Cuadras field and began drilling in 1968.

Federal rules required steel casing to line wells to a certain depth to prevent high-pressure oil from escaping. Union Oil had received permission to use shorter casing on Platform A’s wells than the standard otherwise required, a decision later widely criticized.

The blowout

On the morning of 28 January 1969, crews were pulling pipe from well A-21 when gas and oil surged up the well. Workers managed to cap the wellhead, but the pressure found another route. Oil and gas forced their way through fractures in the seafloor around the platform, creating a bubbling eruption that no valve could stop.

For about eleven days crews struggled to control the leak. By around 7 February they had pumped heavy drilling mud and cement into the well, which reduced the flow sharply. However, oil continued to seep from the sea floor for months, and minor leakage persisted well into the year.

Winds and currents carried the slick toward shore. Oil covered an area of sea estimated at around 800 square miles (2,000 km²) and fouled roughly 35 miles (56 km) of coastline, from beaches near Rincon to Goleta, along with the harbor at Santa Barbara and the shores of the Channel Islands.

Damage to wildlife and the coast

Seabirds suffered the most visible harm. Grebes, loons, cormorants and other diving birds became coated in thick crude and could not fly or keep warm. Volunteers set up cleaning stations, but most oiled birds died anyway. Estimates of seabird deaths are usually given as at least 3,500, and some studies suggest more.

Seals, sea lions and dolphins were also found dead or oiled, though scientists disagreed over how many deaths were caused by the spill. Fishermen lost income, hotels lost visitors, and boats in the harbor were coated with oil.

Clean-up crews spread straw on beaches to soak up the oil and then raked it away. Planes dropped chemical dispersants on the slick, a method that itself raised concern about further environmental harm.

Public reaction

Residents responded quickly. Within days, a citizens’ group called Get Oil Out, known as GOO, began gathering signatures for a petition demanding an end to drilling in the channel; it eventually collected around 100,000 names. Protesters held rallies, boycotted oil companies and, in some cases, burned credit cards from the firms involved.

National television and magazines carried images of oil-soaked birds and blackened sand into homes across the country. Union Oil’s president, Fred L. Hartley, drew sharp criticism for remarks that appeared to play down the importance of the bird deaths.

Interior Secretary Walter Hickel ordered a temporary halt to drilling in the channel, though production was soon allowed to resume. President Richard Nixon visited the area in March 1969 and promised action. In January 1970, on the spill’s anniversary, local campaigners issued a Declaration of Environmental Rights calling for a new relationship between people and nature.

Consequences: new laws and Earth Day

The Santa Barbara spill arrived at a moment of rising concern about pollution. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had warned about pesticides in 1962, and the Torrey Canyon oil spill off Britain in 1967 had shown how damaging oil could be. In the same year as Santa Barbara, Cleveland’s polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire.

Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, which Nixon signed on 1 January 1970. It required federal agencies to study the environmental effects of major projects. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, who had toured the Santa Barbara coast, proposed a national teach-in that became the first Earth Day in April 1970. Later that year the federal government created the Environmental Protection Agency.

In California, the spill strengthened support for protecting the coast. Voters approved Proposition 20 in 1972, creating what became the California Coastal Commission to regulate development along the shoreline. The University of California, Santa Barbara, launched one of the country’s first environmental studies programs in 1970.

Legacy

Platform A was repaired and returned to production, and drilling in the channel continued for decades. Yet the spill changed how Americans thought about offshore oil. It has since been surpassed in size by the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but it remains the largest spill in California’s history.

Santa Barbara’s environmental groups, including the Environmental Defense Center founded in 1977, trace their roots to 1969. The city still marks anniversaries of the spill, and its story is regularly retold whenever offshore drilling is debated.

Timeline

• 1968, February: Federal government auctions oil leases in the Santa Barbara Channel.
• 1969, 28 January: Blowout on Union Oil’s Platform A; oil escapes through the seabed.
• 1969, early February: Oil reaches beaches and the Santa Barbara harbor; GOO petition begins.
• 1969, 7 February: Well is largely sealed with drilling mud and cement, though seepage continues.
• 1969, 21 March: President Nixon visits the Santa Barbara coast.
• 1970, 1 January: National Environmental Policy Act signed into law.
• 1970, 22 April: First Earth Day held across the United States.
• 1972, November: California voters approve Proposition 20 to protect the coast.

Why it matters

The Santa Barbara oil spill showed Americans that industrial accidents could ruin cherished landscapes in full view of television cameras. It helped turn scattered worries about pollution into a political movement, and that movement produced some of the most important environmental laws in US history.