New Plan on Oil Drilling Put Forth by Packard

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) Thursday unveiled an alternate plan for oil exploration off the North County coast that would permit drilling in five tracts off Camp Pendleton in waters about nine miles north of downtown Oceanside.

The plan, announced by Packard at a morning press conference, is a modification of a compromise crafted during recent negotiations between several of the state’s coastal congressmen and Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel. Under the secretary’s proposal, which has sparked a storm of local protest, oil companies would have access to five tracts that are three to 25 miles offshore and extend south from the northern edge of Oceanside to Leucadia.

The tentative agreement would relax a four-year congressional moratorium on oil exploration off the California coast, permitting drilling in 150 ocean-bottom tracts. In return, exploration would essentially be banned until after the year 2000 in 6,300 other tracts now covered by the moratorium.

Packard’s alternative, which is being considered by Hodel, would push the five tracts proposed for North County up the coast to a stretch of federal waters extending roughly from the San Onofre nuclear power plant to the Aliso Creek rest area along Interstate 5.

The proposal also would move the majority of the tracts farther offshore--many of them out of sight from shore--and recommends conditions for safety, air quality, placement of rigs and sharing of revenue with local governments.

Packard, asserting that he would prefer that there be no drilling off the North County coast, billed his alternate plan as an effort to move operations as far from populated areas as possible should the local leasing of tracts become inevitable.

He noted that several tracts under Hodel’s plan are in waters heavily used by the Marine Corps during amphibious training exercises. The site of the alternate tracts is north of the training zone and has won the verbal approval of military officials, Packard said.

“I’ve worked very hard to keep any drilling from occurring in North County waters,” Packard said. “But the political scenario has made that impossible. The political realities are clear, and I cannot block oil drilling and exploration if my colleagues intend to move ahead.”

Packard said he is confident that Hodel will endorse his set of leasing sites. But he added that the compromise to ease the moratorium and open only 150 offshore tracts is “fragile” because of mounting pressure on the Reagan Administration from the oil industry and its friends in Congress.

(The moratorium, which covers 37.2 million acres off the California coast and expires Oct. 1, has become unpopular in recent years with representatives of inland states, who have charged that coastal states are shirking their share of the responsibility for the

nation’s energy needs. Packard has said that expecting the moratorium to continue is “an impossible dream.”)

Local officials had mixed reactions to Packard’s proposal, although most agreed that moving the tracts north would at least reduce the visual impact of drilling operations.

Carlsbad Mayor Mary Casler, calling the eventual placement of oil rigs off the North County coast “all but inevitable,” said that “with certain modifications, I could accept this compromise.”

“I think it’s a little hard for us to swallow because we have been so strongly opposed to any leasing here for so long,” Casler said. “But I’d say Congressman Packard’s solution is the best we’ve seen and certainly is preferable to the leases formerly proposed.”

Oceanside Councilman John MacDonald and area environmentalists, however, were less eager to find a silver lining.

“I want no drilling, period,” MacDonald said. “Even if they’re up north and out of sight, there’s still the potential for a spillage, and that means oil drifting south and spoiling our beach. I can’t say this is acceptable.”

San Diego Sierra Club leaders agreed, raising concerns about the impact of oil operations on the Santa Margarita marsh, a sensitive wetland area on the southern edge of Camp Pendleton.

Jay Powell, Sierra Club conservation coordinator, called the shifting of tracts northward “a deliberate move along the out-of-sight, out-of-mind theory. If they’re planning rigs off the coast of a desolate Marine base, they’re not likely to get the same clamor as if they stretched all the way down to Leucadia.”

Additional reaction came Thursday at a meeting of the San Diego Assn. of Governments (Sandag), where city representatives reviewed Packard’s proposal and suggested ways to strengthen it.

Jack Koerper, Sandag’s special projects director, said “Our position remains that we are still opposed to offshore oil development within the two- to 20-mile area. But I think everyone realizes we’re sort of caught in the middle here, and under the circumstances, this (proposal) may be the best we can do.”

Sandag members will vote on Packard’s plan Aug. 30. Meanwhile, local residents, officials and environmentalists are preparing for Hodel’s visit to Oceanside for a hearing on Aug. 31.