Rival Safety Firms Grilled by Torrance and Mobil : Refinery: A hearing on picking a court-ordered safety adviser opens with the city and the oil company challenging each other’s nominees. The judge will finally decide.

The qualifications of two major consulting firms went on trial in a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday as Mobil Oil Corp. and the city of Torrance pursued their search for a safety adviser to oversee Mobil’s Torrance refinery.

Lawyers for Mobil and the city of Torrance questioned representatives of SRI International of Menlo Park, the city’s nominee, and Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Corp., Mobil’s nominee, during the first day of a hearing in front of retired Superior Court Judge Harry V. Peetris, who is ultimately responsible for choosing the adviser.

The post of a court-supervised safety adviser was created in an October, 1990, consent decree that settled a public nuisance lawsuit brought by the city against Mobil. The city filed the suit after a series of accidents, deaths and injuries raised concerns about the refinery’s safety.

The safety adviser, considered the key element of the decree, will have the power to investigate a wide range of questions at the refinery related to safety, environmental issues, seismic risks and emergency response.

The adviser will also have to approve any modified process developed by Mobil for the use of hydrofluoric acid, a highly toxic chemical employed at the Torrance plant.

The hearing, which will continue today, dramatized how far apart the city and Mobil remain in deciding who should be chosen for the job.

For nearly five hours Wednesday, both sides attempted to highlight the credentials of their preferred candidates, with Mobil continuing its attack on the city’s nominee.

Mobil repeatedly has suggested that SRI lacks sufficient experience in the petrochemical industry--a view the city disputes.

A key witness for the city’s case Wednesday was a former Mobil process engineer, Susan Leiby, who joined SRI last year after nine years with Mobil. She would be among the employees working on the advisory job if SRI is chosen.

Under questioning by the city, Leiby said she spent “substantial time” at several Mobil refineries--including five or six weeks at the Torrance refinery--while working for Mobil. In her last Mobil post, she was a process engineering supervisor at the Mobil refinery in Joliet, Ill., where she said she had experience with the alkylation unit, where hydrofluoric acid is used.

Mobil attorney Ernie Getto attempted to undercut her experience, however, by pointing out that Leiby did not work specifically in the refinery safety department or supervise the actual operations of the alkylation unit.

B. Griffith Holmes, a Westinghouse employee who said he would act as a liaison on the safety adviser project, testified about his experience in safety analysis and answered questions about the Westinghouse proposal.

The city contended in a recent court brief that Westinghouse views the safety adviser’s role as “just another consultant at the refinery” and not as an officer of the court. However, Holmes, under questioning by Mobil, said, “My understanding was we’d be working for the court.”

The first witness at the hearing, a Mobil safety expert, raised repeated questions about SRI’s work in refinery-related areas.

“I don’t think they have the relevant experience to do the type of thing that would be required as a safety adviser,” said the witness, David Miller, manager of employee and facility safety with Mobil.

Miller said SRI lacks practical experience in the refining industry as well as staff with “appropriate credentials” in industrial safety matters.

Miller also attacked SRI’s proposal for the Torrance job, saying the firm was unable to name an exact dollar amount for the job and would require as long as two years to “scope” the job.

Moreover, Miller said, “SRI refused to divulge the name of a client for which they’d done this kind of work.”

George R. Hedges, representing the city, told Peetris that SRI had sought and received the client’s permission to discuss details of the job “in camera” with the judge.

But Mobil’s lawyer objected to being excluded, and Peetris finally suggested that SRI contact its client again for further instructions.

Attorneys for the city said the structure of Wednesday’s hearing was more formal than they had anticipated. Peetris made only a few inquiries of the witnesses, leaving the bulk of the questioning to the attorneys.