Leading oil companies have agreed to spend $800 million--more than three times their earlier estimate--to staff and equip five around-the-clock teams capable of quickly responding to a major oil spill anywhere in U.S. coastal waters, industry sources said Wednesday.

The regional response centers, to be announced by oil industry executives today in Washington, D.C., are at Port Hueneme, Seattle, Lake Charles, La., the New York-New Jersey area and Port Everglades, Fla.

In California, satellite staging areas are planned in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The centers will be staffed by 64 full-time personnel.

The response centers are expected to be operational within 2 1/2 years, and will augment existing cooperatives that are not equipped to deal with a major oil spill.

The chief executive officers of 14 major oil companies organized a task force after the disastrous March 24, 1989, Exxon Valdez spill that dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound. The task force quickly concluded that the petroleum industry had "neither the equipment or the personnel" to handle a catastrophic tanker spill.

"If oil is spilled close to a shoreline and if the drift of the oil caused by wind and current is onshore, it is unlikely that anyone can prevent shoreline contamination, no matter how ideal the conditions," the task force warned.

Last February, two environmental groups completed a yearlong study that found that oil tanker traffic to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York harbors is so heavy--at least 1,000 tanker visits to each port annually--that a major oil spill was inevitable.

This study came weeks after the 394,000-gallon spill off Huntington Beach from the tanker Pacific Trader.

The 14 petroleum companies had pledged to spend $250 million over five years to fund the "Petroleum Industry Response Organization" (PIRO). By comparison, Exxon spent more than $2 billion to clean up the Alaska spill.

The organization will be renamed the Marine Spill Response Corporation and will be headed by retired Coast Guard Vice Adm. John D. Costello.

An estimated $60 million will be spent to set up the Port Hueneme response center. The Seattle center will cost $46 million, with staging areas planned for Astoria, Ore., Bellingham, Wash., Port Angeles, Wash., and Alaska.