Kinder Morgan Liquids Terminals LLC will pay more than $13 million as part of a settlement to clean up the former site of an oil terminal at the Port of Los Angeles.
The agreement is the last in a series of three settlements with energy companies to pay for an estimated $22 million project to repair damage from leaky storage tanks, Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich said in a statement Tuesday.
Kinder Morgan, a Houston company, agreed to pay 60 percent of the remediation costs, pending court approval on May 8, while Texaco and ConocoPhillips previously agreed to pay the rest.
“We are pleased that these terminal companies have stepped up in order to ensure that our port continues to remain clean and safe,” Trutanich said.
The terminal was built in the 1920s. Chicago company GATX Corp. operated the Los Angeles Marine Terminal at Berths 171-173 and shut it down in 1999. Kinder Morgan acquired the terminal in 2000 and never operated it. The terminal was demolished in 2003 and the pollution was discovered later.
The City Attorney’s Office sued the former tenants in 2005.
Concurrent with the settlement, the Kinder Morgan was given a five-year extension of its lease to operate another terminal at Berths 118-119, which also will require clean-up.
“Kinder Morgan is committed to continuing its work with the Port of Los Angeles to complete all remediation work at the site,” Emily Mir, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an email.
