New Club Hopes to Act as a Forum on Oil Issues

Although members of the newly formed San Diego Petroleum Club jokingly refer to themselves as the “Oil Barons,” they are not likely to march in lock step on every energy issue.

That is especially true when it comes to touchy subjects such as offshore oil drilling, which became an even touchier topic after last week’s announcement that exploratory drilling will be allowed off Oceanside.

“The oil and gas business is really made up of a varied group of people,” said club member Nelson Esque, founder of First National Oil, a La Mesa-based oil technology company. “You can’t say we’re all alike.”

The club is drawing members from a small but active San Diego energy community that includes oil and gas exploration and production companies, technical support service companies and industry analysts.

It also hopes to attract members from the industry’s executive ranks. “There are some people with heavy credentials who have retired out here,” said club president Norm Blumenthal, chief operating officer of Brumark Corp., a La Jolla-based energy company.

That varied membership will produce opposing viewpoints when the club is confronted by political issues.

At last month’s organizational meeting, the club rebuffed a Chamber of Commerce representative who wanted the club to endorse the chamber’s pro-offshore oil drilling stance. Club members said they won’t endorse or protest offshore drilling. Rather, they want the organization to serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas. Consequently, it won’t take political stands unless members vote to do so, Blumenthal said.

That won’t stop individual members from making their political views known, however.

“People are people, and they’ll express different opinions on political issues,” said Dick Hertzberg, a club member and president of ENPEX, an oil and gas production company. “It always comes down to local issues--like should we or shouldn’t we drill off San Diego--and people generally respond in their own self-interests.”

Faced with offshore drilling, industry retirees and active industry members who moved to San Diego to enjoy its special environmental charms might find their personal opinions clashing with their energy industry backgrounds.

Hertzberg said that, in the end, most club members would probably support offshore drilling. However, he added that most members would also rationalize the matter, saying, “ ‘I live down here and I’d just as soon see blue skies and seas, and not see it all cluttered up.’ ”

The issue will be a heated one, predicted Hertzberg, who believes offshore oil rigs have a certain kind of beauty. “I just gave a talk about oil drilling at my son’s kindergarten and . . . the teacher asked me about offshore drilling.”

“If offshore drilling is imposed on us, why not get the best possible (information on) offsets to pollution and the other possible problems,” said club secretary Robert L.T. Brower, an industry analyst with Paine Webber. “We anticipate being able to use the very influential people who have associated themselves with the club to help San Diego form the best possible operations offshore that we can dictate.”

The club’s members also are likely to express varied views on other industry topics, including federal regulation, the role of utilities, and the energy mix that the United States should settle on.

“This is probably one of the most competitive industries in the world,” Hertzberg said. In addition to energy exploration and production companies, there are “distribution people and the utility networks, and each has a different story. Then you’ve got the guy with an oil well in the backyard that’s been in his family for the last 100 years and a huge company like Exxon.”

Although the club is still circulating membership letters, Blumenthal said the club could attract as many as 50 members. “You go to a party and think you’re the only gas man (in town),” Blumenthal said. “But we had over 50 people at our first meeting.”

That is a healthy turnout in a county where just 31 gas and oil wells--all of them dry--have been drilled, according to the San Diego State University geological studies department. That irony is not lost on Blumenthal, who said the club was formed in part to counter San Diego’s isolation from the rest of the oil and gas world.

The club will hear energy industry speakers and promises to invite representatives from environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth President David Brower, whom Robert Brower referred to as “a distant cousin.”

That promise of eclecticism has drawn interest from potential club members, including Municipal Court Judge Robert Coates, who holds a geology degree from San Diego State University and pursues geology as a hobby. Coates, who teaches environmental and natural resources law at the University of San Diego, said the club could help him expand beyond the “often-times academic” encounters he has with the energy business and help him “expand my appreciation of other points of view.”

The club is patterned after clubs in major oil centers such as New Orleans and Houston, and members will likely enjoy reciprocity with those elite clubs.