LOS ANGELES : Mobil Pleads No Contest in ’91 Pipeline Oil Spill
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Mobil Oil Co. pleaded no contest Monday to a criminal misdemeanor charge involving a January, 1991, oil spill from a chronically leaky pipeline in Valencia and agreed to contribute $200,000 to environmental projects.
Although the plea entered in Los Angeles Municipal Court resolved the criminal case against Mobil, the oil giant still faces a state civil suit over the pipeline rupture, which spilled nearly 75,000 gallons of sticky crude into the Santa Clara River.
It was the seventh major accident in five years on the 90-mile underground line, which carried heated crude oil from fields in Kern County to Mobil’s Torrance refinery.
Officials said the spill fouled a 15-mile reach of the Santa Clara River, killed 186 birds and damaged the habitat of two endangered species--the unarmored three-spine stickleback, a fish, and the least Bell’s vireo, a bird.
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