City Council Support Buoys Palisades Oil Drilling Foes

Buoyed by new support on the Los Angeles City Council, foes of Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s plan to drill wells beneath the Pacific Palisades released a letter Wednesday signed by a council majority urging the California Coastal Commission to reject the oil company’s latest effort.

The letter represents the first time in the 20-year controversy over drilling at the foot of the slide-prone bluffs that a council majority has supported opposition efforts, said Robert Sulnick, president of the activist group, No Oil Inc.

Although the eight council members urged rejection of Occidental’s current proposal, however, interviews indicated that it remains uncertain whether a majority would ultimately oppose drilling.

Instead, the crucial issue for some council members was what they perceived as a violation of city authority.

At a City Hall press conference that featured actors James Garner and Ted Danson as extra media lures, Sulnick and Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents the Palisades area, charged that Occidental is attempting to bypass City Council approval in its application to dig two exploratory wells a short distance inland from Pacific Coast Highway.

An attorney for Occidental, Elizabeth Watson, said, however, that the company is simply following proper Coastal Commission procedures.

The Palisades drilling question has been in political and legal limbo since No Oil’s victory over Occidental in a Superior Court fight last year. No Oil and other opponents claim that the drilling, which would be near an earthquake fault, would increase the risks of slides and oil spills. They also contend that drilling would give impetus to what they say is the oil industry’s long-range agenda--off-shore drilling in Santa Monica Bay.

Occidental maintains that it has developed an ecologically sound plan.

The court decision, being appealed by Occidental, at least temporarily thwarted the plan for both exploratory and production drilling that was approved by a somewhat different City Council in 1985, after Mayor Tom Bradley reversed his position on the issue and said he supported the Occidental plan.

The City Council’s 1985 approval is legally valid, Watson said. Although drilling by Occidental is prohibited pending a resolution of court appeals, the company has decided to proceed with its Coastal Commission applications, the attorney said.

The dispute over city authority hinges on a technical point. The Coastal Commission insisted that Occidental separate its drilling application into two applications, one for exploration to be considered first, then another for production.

The eight council members, in their letter to the commission, said the change in the application should first be reviewed by the full council. “Any contention that the City of Los Angeles, because it previously approved a project for exploration and production, would approve an exploration-only project is speculative,.” the letter said.

For that reason, the council members said, the council should retain its first right of refusal on the application.

Of the signers of the letter, five are long-time opponents of the drilling plan: Braude, Joel Wachs, Ernani Bernardi, Joy Picus and Zev Yaroslavsky. Two others, Michael Woo and Gloria Molina, have joined the council since 1985. The eighth, council President Pat Russell, was a staunch supporter of the Occidental drilling plan in 1985.

Sulnick said he believes that Russell’s reelection race prompted her to sign the letter to help appease environmentally minded constituents.

Russell, dismissing Sulnick’s comments as “pretty snide,” said she “feels very strongly that a request of drilling should go before the city before it goes before the Coastal Commission.” Russell said her support for Occidental’s 1985 drilling plan has not changed.

Although neither of the new council members expressed an opinion on the drilling plan itself, Sulnick predicted that Woo and Molina would prove to be reliable allies of No Oil. Molina said she wants the issue to return to the City Council. Although she has not taken a stand on the specific Occidental plan, the former assemblywoman said her history has been to favor stringent restrictions on oil drilling in environmentally sensitive terrain.

After the press conference, Garner and Danson said they hoped that their presence would help publicize No Oil’s message, rather than create the impression that the drilling controversy is an elitist issue.

“This is not for a few people on the coastline who live on the beach,” said Danson, star of the television sitcom “Cheers” and a resident of Santa Monica.

He added: “It’s half of East L.A. going out there. When you go to the beach, you don’t see a lot of Mercedes.”