Pact Could Allow Oil Drilling Off North County Coastline

San Diego area congressmen, pessimistic about the chances for extending a ban on oil drilling off most of California’s coast, are negotiating an agreement with the U.S. Interior Department that could permit offshore drilling near Oceanside and Carlsbad.

While the congressmen characterize the potential pact as, in the words of Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), “maybe the best compromise we can get under the circumstances,” local officials, particularly those in the North County areas that could be affected, are less sanguine.

“We don’t want to see any drilling off our coast,” said Carlsbad City Councilman Richard Chick. “This might be a real Lulu.”

“This would not be an acceptable compromise,” added Jay Powell, conservation coordinator of the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club. “It’s an unacceptable capitulation . . . to the oil industry.”

Local officials have also expressed concern about the effects that drilling operations would have on air quality.

However, Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), a sponsor of the existing offshore oil drilling moratorium, called the ongoing negotiations over possible local sites for oil and gas exploration “a realistic, responsible approach to a very serious situation.”

“If I were a benevolent dictator who didn’t have to compromise . . . there would be no drilling off any of San Diego County’s coastline,” Lowery said. “But that’s not the way the real world works. In the real world, you fight for the best deal you can get and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

The Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote next week on whether to renew some or all of the moratorium, which currently bars oil drilling off most of Massachusetts and 37.2 million acres off the California coastline, including a 20-mile-wide area extending from Newport Beach to the Mexican border.

The moratorium, which expires Oct. 1, was approved by the appropriations panel by a single vote last year. However, local congressmen doubt that the ban will be renewed, largely because inland states’ representatives are becoming increasingly unsympathetic toward what they perceive as some coastal states’ efforts to avoid shouldering their fair share of the nation’s energy burden.

“The growing perception is that we’re being a little selfish or even elitist in our attitude,” Lowery said. “We haven’t given up on (trying to continue) the moratorium, but it’s going to be real, real tough sledding.”

Packard is considerably more pessimistic about the likelihood of extending the moratorium.

“I see no possibility at all that it’s going to pass,” the Carlsbad Republican said. “If by some quirk it passes in the committee, it won’t pass on the floor. Right now, expecting the moratorium to continue is an impossible dream.”

Realizing that lifting the moratorium would open much of California’s waters to exploration, statewide congressional leaders earlier this year began what are, in essence, damage-control negotiations with Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel. The talks are aimed at scaling back the number of potential offshore tracts where drilling might occur.

Although an agreement has not yet been reached, at this stage in the negotiations it appears that the only local offshore area where drilling might be permitted in the immediate future is a nearly seven-mile stretch of coastline extending from north Oceanside to Carlsbad.

Nine oil companies have expressed tentative interest in six North County tracts that are just beyond the the three-mile offshore drilling limit, according to Jack Koerper, special projects director of the San Diego Assn. of Governments (Sandag). Under the terms now being discussed in the Interior Department negotiations, the remainder of San Diego County’s coastline would be exempt from any possible oil exploration for 5 to 15 years, Lowery said.

Discussions about the six North County tracts, Packard explained, have “shifted from talking about preventing the drilling to looking at ways to control it.”

“We’d all love to prevent any drilling, but at some point, you have to face up to political reality,” Packard said. “Recognizing that the other side holds all the trump cards, I’m trying to get as many concessions as I can.” Packard also emphasized that even if the six North County tracts were designated for possible drilling, oil companies ultimately could decide not to explore there.

In a meeting with Hodel this week, Packard asked that certain conditions be imposed on any North County drilling, including requirements that:

- All offshore drilling equipment and pipelines be beneath the surface of the water. That provision would solve most of the visual and aesthetic objections to offshore drilling, but would not prevent the risk of spills. Moreover, because of the water depth in the North County tracts being considered, there are questions about whether subsurface equipment would be feasible.

- Local governments affected by the drilling would receive a share of the oil companies’ revenues and would not be preempted from making normal land-use decisions on any on-shore facilities such as loading docks or transfer stations.

-All state environmental standards would apply to the drilling operations.

Many environmentalists and other local officials, however, emphasized that even if Packard’s proposed conditions were approved, they still would regard offshore drilling as unacceptable. If Congress and the Interior Department ultimately authorized offshore drilling here, lawsuits seeking to block the oil and gas exploration almost certainly would be filed, opponents said.

Air quality could be “very adversely affected” by any drilling operations only about three miles offshore, according to Sandag’s Koerper. A 1983 report by a Sandag task force also noted that offshore drilling could interfere with amphibious military training, an issue that Camp Pendleton spokesman Capt. Jerry Broeckert said Thursday “remains a major concern.”

Voicing a concern shared by many, Sierra Club official Powell also warned against “letting the oil companies get their foot in the door.”

“Once they do that, in a few years they’ll want to move a little farther south, then they’ll want to add a few more rigs and then a few more tracts,” Powell said.

Some opposition also stems from an anywhere-but-here mentality. In other words, individuals may concede that there is a need to search for energy reserves, but they would prefer not to have the drilling occur in their backyards. For example, Dana Whitson, Oceanside’s special projects director, complained: “If the idea is to restrict (drilling), why does it have to be off Oceanside and Carlsbad?”

Mike Fergus, a spokesman for the Los Angeles-based Western Oil and Gas Assn., characterized many of the objections as “unnecessary and premature panic.”

“There are ways to do this in an environmentally sensitive manner--that’s as much in the industry’s interest as the communities’ interest,” Fergus said. He added that while the oil industry would prefer that the moratorium simply be lifted without new restrictions being imposed, even limited exploration rights “represent a step in the right direction.”

“From our position now with the moratorium in place, we’ve got nowhere to go but up,” Fergus said. “Anything opening up any areas would be a welcome change.”

Under timetables established for environmental impact reports and public hearings, drilling conceivably could start within two years in any areas cleared for exploration. Fergus, however, said he doubted that drilling would begin within five to eight years.

Lowery, meanwhile, said he shares the concerns of those who are adamantly opposed to drilling anywhere off San Diego’s coastline, but he argued that it would be “irresponsible to go to the mat on the moratorium and risk losing everything.”

“If we roll the dice on the moratorium and lose, the whole coast might be vulnerable,” Lowery said. “But if we can protect most of California’s coast for five to 15 years, and then continue to fight over a very limited number of tracts, I think we have vastly accomplished our goal. Maybe not 100%, but this is not a perfect world.”