Strategy for a Clean Ocean : Council Asks Voters to Ban Handling of Oil

The San Diego City Council on Monday became the first brick in what may become a wall of resistance against offshore oil and gas exploration, voting to place a measure on the November ballot banning any onshore pipelines and refineries along the city’s coastline.

The council voted unanimously to ask San Diego voters on Nov. 4 to amend the City Charter to make it impossible for the city to issue permits for the construction, operation or maintenance of pipelines, refineries and other facilities that would be needed for offshore drilling.

In doing so, the city became the first public agency in San Diego County to seek to use its local powers to discourage offshore drilling. Since oil reserves off the city’s coast are considered minimal, the council’s idea was to make offshore drilling more expensive so that oil companies would avoid exploring the area under any federal leasing plan.

After the city’s action Monday, other officials in the county indicated that they would follow suit. County Supervisor Susan Golding said her staff will present a similar ballot proposal to ban onshore facilities along the unincorporated coastline of Cardiff, Leucadia, Solana Beach and Encinitas. And the Oceanside City Council is scheduled to debate an onshore ban during its first meeting next month.

“The idea is to cause a wall, if you will, against onshore support facilities all the way from the Mexican border to the county line,” acting San Diego Mayor Ed Struiksma said after the council vote Monday.

Struiksma, who sponsored Monday’s measure, said the city intends to “put as many roadblocks as possible in front of the industry, to make it as costly as we possibly can . . . to fight them in the courts if we have to . . . to fight them in Washington . . . to fight them any way we can.”

Golding said the city’s action--and the one she hopes will follow by the county--amounts to a message with “teeth.”

But an oil industry representative said an onshore ban would have little effect in San Diego.

“To me, it seems a lot like Chicken Little running around, saying the sky is falling down,” said Henry W. Wright, manager of exploration for the Western Oil & Gas Assn., based in Los Angeles.

Wright emphasized during the council debate that the likelihood of finding oil or gas off the San Diego coast is minimal, since the industry has drilled 10 dry holes in the ocean off San Clemente.

“I can say with some degree of certainty that if there is a sale, there will be some interest in bidding offshore San Diego,” he told council members. “Not a great deal of interest, but some.”

Wright defended his industry’s environmental record in offshore drilling, saying that in the last 17 years, ocean oil rigs have produced 3 billion barrels of oil and spilled only 15 barrels. The last major oil spill along the California coastline occurred around Santa Barbara in 1969.

He said that, if a local ban were imposed, any oil well drilled off the San Diego coast could be serviced by tankers and other vessels, which would transport the crude oil and gas to refineries elsewhere.

Yet Wright conceded outside of the council chambers that using the ships would “add a substantial expense” and could throw a cloud over any exploration efforts off the San Diego coastline.

Offshore oil and gas drilling is regulated by the U.S. Department of the Interior, with approval from Congress. The issue has become controversial as environmentalists and Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel have battled over the amount of leasing and exploration to be permitted.

One proposed plan calls for the sale of two tracts, each including many sites, off the coast of Southern California and could involve the drilling of 207 exploratory wells over a five-year period. Over 35 years, the report estimates, the Southern California fields could include 475 production wells yielding about 462 million barrels of oil and 726 billion cubic feet of gas.

Although San Diego offshore tracts don’t rate highly in the Southern Californian scheme, five near Oceanside and Carlsbad were slated for lease under a previous federal program. The North County tracts, ranging from 3 to 25 miles off the coast, amount to about nine square miles.

Struiksma and his staff, who have said oil and gas finds off the city shoreline would be relatively marginal at best, have argued for the onshore ban because ocean drilling could interfere with Navy operations and might hurt the $3-billion annual tourist industry.

“There’s always the opportunity that they may hit the big one,” Struiksma said. “Heaven forbid they ever did, because it would be just devastating to our coastline.’

Several speakers at Monday’s meeting underscored the danger to the environment by resurrecting memories of the 1969 oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast. An Interior Department report has predicted two spills of more than 1,000 barrels of oil during future ocean drilling.

Golding spoke at the council meeting, supporting the onshore ban and warning that oil derricks would add to San Diego County’s air pollution problems. She said a 1983 federal environmental impact report showed that one oil platform operating off Oceanside would increase ozone along the coast by three parts per 100 million, or 25% of the allowable level.

Golding also said she would ask county supervisors to place a similar onshore ban of oil facilities on the November ballot for county voters, to seal off the unincorporated areas of the county coast between Del Mar and Carlsbad.

Oceanside Mayor Larry Bagley will meet this week with officials from Camp Pendleton in an attempt to persuade the Marine Corps base to take the same position banning onshore facilities.

The Oceanside City Council will consider a similar measure--not a ballot proposition but a land-use policy--during its first meeting in June, said Councilman John MacDonald.