The governor and state Legislature oppose Santa Barbara County’s request for offshore oil drilling. A county supervisor says the area will be mined for oil eventually anyway, so the county should be ahead of the game when it can still have control.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors last month submitted a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office requesting policy changes that would allow expanded oil exploration and extraction off the county’s shores. This decision, made by a 3-2 vote, has added fuel to the debate about offshore drilling, and its economic and security benefits versus possible environmental harms.
“A change in policy and the cooperation of state and local permitting considerations could increase oil supplies in the near future, reducing the economic burden of our dependence on international oil supplies,” the letter states.
There has been a federal moratorium on offshore drilling in effect for 27 years. President George W. Bush recently called for an end to the moratorium. But the decision is not in his hands. That is up to the United States Congress, which is voting on a new energy package Sept. 12 that addresses the moratorium among other issues.
Although the law is not totally clear, it is likely that the federal government has authority over the state to decide whether there should be drilling off states like California. But a majority of the California leaders do not support an end to the moratorium.
“The governor remains opposed to any new offshore oil leases,” said Schwarzenegger spokesperson Sandy Cooney in an interview with The Malibu Times. “This has been the governor’s consistent position since he was elected.”
Also, both houses of the state Legislature have passed AJR51, a resolution drafted by Assemblymember Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) in opposition to lifting the moratorium.
The issue of offshore oil drilling is a heated debate. Drilling advocates say the country must lower its dependence on foreign oil and that authorizing expanded leases for offshore drilling will provide immediate relief against sky rocketing prices at the pump and protect America’s future energy needs. The opposition says renewed drilling would yield no oil for at least 10 years, while providing windfalls for an oil industry that already gets huge tax breaks, that America’s offshore reserves would only meet a fraction of the country’s demand anyway and the effort would not be worth the environmental risks to coastal economies.
Nonetheless, voter unease over economic issues in the run-up to a historical election has prompted some reluctant concession to offshore drilling from surprising corners.
Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has spoken in favor of lifting the moratorium. Meanwhile, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, has said he would be willing to consider renewed offshore drilling as one answer to the energy crisis, if only to open up a grid locked Congress to compromise on the matter.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last month she would consider allowing a congressional vote on the issue if drilling was part of a wider energy plan that also considered alternative energy sources.
The spill of ’69 revisited
The Santa Barbara vote comes nearly 40 years after a 3 million-gallon oil spill, which killed wildlife, blackened beaches and spawned the modern environmental movement when Earth Day was launched the next year in response to the catastrophe of 1969.
“You’d think they’d have longer memories,” Kira Redmon, spokeswoman for environmental watchdog Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, said. “But we’ve got a conservative, pro-development majority on the board of supervisors right now and they want tax revenue from oil leases.”
Susan Jordan, director of the California Coastal Protection Network and wife of Assemblymember Nava, said she was appalled at the Board of Supervisors’ testimony on the matter.
“Their letter to the governor contains information that is patently false,” Jordan said. “It’s a serious thing when you can’t trust public officials to be truthful. They said that expanded drilling would solve their county’s budget woes, but the fact is they are speculating.”
Adding to the rancor of the situation is the seeming politicization of the Santa Barbara board’s decision to encourage drilling, both onshore and off. One of the county’s biggest energy corporations, Greka Energy, was recently fined $8.5 million for repeated failure to comply with cleanup orders issued by the EPA and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Greka has been responsible for a series of catastrophic onshore oil spills, where more than 500,000 gallons of crude oil and processed water have been spilled during the last eight years and almost 300,000 during the past several months.
Greka has leased lands belonging to Santa Barbara County Supervisor Brooks Firestone, Jordan said, and suffered a major oil spill at Firestone Vineyard earlier this year. Firestone has recently recused himself from considering county business that deals with Greka
While Greka currently doesn’t own any offshore leases, Assemblymember Nava said it owns the small island connected to the shore by a short causeway near Carpinteria and has been cited for violations at this oil-producing facility at least four times.
Nava disputes the benefits of offshore drilling promoted by county leaders.
“Any tax revenue from renewed offshore leases would go to the state, not Santa Barbara County,” Nava said. “Besides, Santa Barbara County has done a dismal job of regulating onshore drilling as it is.”
Supervisor Firestone maintains the county would receive a small amount of royalties and additional property taxes.
“Sooner or later, the country will come mine this oil,” Firestone said. “There will be an oil shortage and when people start to get cold because they need heating oil, they will look at this issue differently.
He continued, “Now, do we want to wait till there’s a crisis or do we want to have controls and safety and monitoring in position. I’m a businessman and we need to look to our ordinary citizens who pay five dollars at the pump.”
Firestone said that, since the ’69 oil spill, only about 900 gallons have spilled in offshore waters.
“The yearly natural seepage we get offshore here is equal to the whole ’69 spill,” he said. “We can’t think in 1969 technology terms. We must recognize the proven safety of offshore drilling.”