BP pays $1.7 mln for Alaska spill-rule violations

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sept 22 (Reuters) - BP's (BP.L) Alaska unit has paid $1.7 million in civil fines to settle complaints that it violated state rules oil-spill control rules, Alaska officials said Tuesday.

State oil-spill regulations and BP's own spill-contingency plan require that oil-storage and fuel-loading areas be surrounded by lined containment areas to catch and hold maximum volumes of potentially leaked oil, said Assistant Alaska Attorney General Breck Tostevin.

But a 2007 state inspection and a subsequent audit by BP found that many of the containment areas were too small, Tostevin said.

"Some of them were simply built too small, and some of them had eroded over time or filled in so that they wouldn't hold the right volume of oil," he said, adding the settlement announced did not involve actual spills.

BP also agreed to a series of actions to correct problems with spill-containment areas at the Greater Prudhoe Bay oil-field unit and the Endicott and Badami fields, said a joint statement issued by the Alaska Department of Law and Department of Environmental Conservation.

BP has repaired most of the inadequate sites, state officials said, with the rest of the work to be completed in 2010.

The settlement is not related to BP's 2006 spill of 212,252 gallons of oil at Prudhoe Bay in March of 2006 -- the largest oil spill on record for the North Slope -- or a much-smaller spill elsewhere on the field five months later.

Those spills, which were released through corrosion-eaten holes in a oil-transit pipelines, are the subject of a pending state lawsuit.

That suit is seeking millions of dollars in environmental fines, plus hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for what the state claims was oil revenue lost when BP temporarily shut down half of Prudhoe Bay's production. (Editing by David Gregorio)