Sohio (Standard Oil Co. Ohio) gives up on West Coast-Texas line

After four years of regulatory delay, Sohio has dropped plans for its crude oil terminal and pipeline to move tankered Prudhoe Bay crude from Long Beach, Calif., to Midland, Tex. Although Sohio agreed to spend $80 million to clean up pollution caused by other companies to more than offset its own pollution, the local air quality management district would not approve the plan. Sohio chairman A. W. Whitehouse charged that the terminal and pipeline were caught in a ''quagmire of federal and state regulations'' that could overwhelm any major energy project regardless of the national interest. The fact that West Coast refineries, as a result of the Iranian oil shutdown, are taking 850,000 bbl/day of the 1.2 million bbl/day of crude moving through the trans-Alaska pipeline may also have contributed to the abandonment of the project.