Plan approved for consolidating Banning Ranch oil and gas facilities
The California Coastal Commission approved a plan Friday to consolidate a portion of Banning Ranch’s longstanding oil and gas production facilities into a more concentrated area, a move that disappointed activists who attended the panel’s hearing in Ventura.
The commission approved Horizontal Development LLC’s proposal on an 8-1 vote, with Commissioner Nidia Garcia-Erceg dissenting. She did not state her reason.
Under the plan, during the next three decades Horizontal will be allowed to build up to 77 additional wells within two already industrialized areas of the Banning Ranch property while simultaneously consolidating its existing wells, structures and oil and gas production facilities into those two areas.
The plan also includes abandoning other wells outside the designated areas.
“We are taking a sprawling, large footprint oil facility that is 70 years old and we’re consolidating it down to a very small footprint, which is already intensely developed,” said Don Schmitz, representing Horizontal Development.
The vote came three months after the commission denied a development plan for Banning Ranch that would add 895 homes, a hostel, a 75-room hotel and 45,100 square feet of retail space on 62 acres of the 401-acre coastal expanse in Newport Beach.
Commission staff, which approved and negotiated the oil and gas plan, said it would involve installing more modern equipment and wouldn’t negatively affect nearby habitat for birds and plants. There will continue to be a buffer, staff said, between the oil operations and environmentally sensitive areas, some of which contain the rare southern tarplant.
The commission’s vote does not affect other companies’ drilling activities in Banning Ranch, an active oilfield since the 1940s.
Steve Ray, executive director of the Banning Ranch Conservancy, which seeks to make the property an open space free of development, noted that the plan will not remove 67 wells not owned by Horizontal.
He expressed concern about the new oilfield technology possibly causing sinkholes or geysers, as well as the project’s seismological and geological effects.
“In other words, nature going crazy out there,” Ray said.
Schmitz dismissed those concerns, saying Banning Ranch’s oilfield activity is not the type that will induce seismic activity, nor has it in 70 years.
Brad Pierce, an oil and gas industry veteran asked by the Banning Ranch Conservancy to evaluate the plan, also was critical of Horizontal Development’s proposal.
He called it “vague” and lacking a lot of drilling-related details that would aid in evaluating the project’s potential risks to the environment.
Commission staff said such aspects are under the purview of the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources.
Other critics, including some Native American groups, were concerned over the prospect of prolonged drilling activity at Banning Ranch, where their ancestors lived for thousands of years.
Elizabeth Cameron called the area “sacred.”
“Please protect native lands and allow native peoples to be partners in your conservation efforts,” she said.
Twitter: @BradleyZint
