What is that unfortunate smell?

There was a distinctive smell at Refugio Beach. Someone called the fire department. Firefighters from Santa Barbara found a big old oil slick – “dark, black crude oil” – in the ocean. About a half-mile-long slick, Captain Dave Zaniboni told USA Today.

Unlike the huge, notorious 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, from a blowout at an offshore oil rig, this didn’t start in the ocean. It was traced to a broken pipeline belonging to Plains All American Pipeline, based in Houston. It broke underground and flowed through a culvert into the Pacific at Refugio Beach. It’s an 11-mile section of pipeline connected to a big network centered in Kern County, California.

(Disclosure: I volunteer with International Bird Rescue, an organization that does wildlife response in oil spills. Nothing in this post has been seen by IBR. It is my own opinion.)

Plains All American Pipeline put out a statement Wednesday morning saying:

Plains deeply regrets this release has occurred and is making every effort to limit its environmental impact.

Coincidentally, I regret that this occurred, too. Deeply. But, as SorryWatch keeps having to point out,  regret is not apology. “Regret is about the speaker’s feelings; apology is about the listener’s feelings,” says Snarly. Maybe we need a whole post focusing on the mistake of hiding behind “regret” when you’re at fault.

So, bad apology.

Perhaps unlike Plains All American Pipeline, I will pause to consider my responsibility in this event. My daily life is built around the use of gas and oil. I don’t have much choice. If I were to try to limit this spill’s impact in person, I wouldn’t be traveling to Santa Barbara by pogo stick. (Nor have I stopped to consider the sustainability of the process of making that pogo stick. For all I know, pogo sticks have giant footprints.)

My ability to affect the kinds of power sources the world depends on is limited, and is in the political realm. However, if I were dealing with oil up close, I would work very hard not to SPILL IT.

I’m shocked that Plains didn’t detect the spill. That it took worried citizens sniffing and calling the fire department to reveal that the pipeline had broken. That oil was gushing out. That it was running down a culvert into the OCEAN. Really? No pressure gauges?

Here’s another apology from Plains, made at a press conference later in the day:

We’re sorry this accident has happened, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience to the community.

That’s Darren Palmer, district manager for Plains All American. Note his classic use of the passive construction. This accident “has happened.” And minimizing: “the inconvenience.”

More bad apology.

“This is more than an inconvenience, this is a disaster,” snarled Doreen Farr, a county supervisor.

Estimates were that 21,000 gallons of oil were released. But I don’t pay much attention, because such estimates are often the kind of gross underestimates that most of us call lies. Remember Deepwater Horizon?

Later in the day, the half-mile long slick had divided in two and was fouling 9 miles of coast. Oh, here’s a more recent story that says it could be up to 105,000 gallons that spilled, and the 21,000 just refers to the part that got to the ocean. I see.

Now Plains is saying that a control room operator noticed something amiss, and shut down the pipeline right around the same time the firefighters were investigating.

Or maybe not. Another story, in the Santa Barbara Independent, says the firefighters spotted the oil flowing into the sea at 11:30 am, and that the leak was stopped at 3 pm.

It turns out there are safeguards. Which didn’t work. The head of the county’s energy division said the pipeline had a sensor system that can “pick up pinhole leaks” and shut down the system automatically. He’s puzzled it didn’t.

The Independent story has some details on other spills from Plains pipelines, and wrangles between Plains, the EPA, and other entities. Amusingly, it mentions a spill in LA County a year ago (19,000 gallons), which also eluded Plains’s attention until residents, alerted by a distinctive smell, called the fire department.

Sounds regrettable.