Palisades Drilling--Court Is the Next Step

The next chapter in the tortuous, 20-year saga of Occidental Petroleum’s efforts to drill for oil in the Pacific Palisades will be played out in the courtroom in the wake of the California Coastal Commission’s cliffhanger approval of exploratory wells.

For all its drama and political intrigue--highlighted by the extraordinary dismissal of one commissioner in the midst of Tuesday’s meeting--the commission’s 7-5 decision largely served to keep Occidental’s drilling plans alive. It may be years before drilling begins in the ecologically sensitive terrain, if ever.

For Occidental, the primary goal now is to overturn the 1985 decision of Superior Court Judge Norman Epstein. In a major victory for drilling opponents, Epstein ruled that a critical element of the project--pipeline safety--had not been properly addressed in the environmental analysis of the plan. Ordinances based on a faulty environmental review are not valid, Epstein ruled.

Opponents of drilling at the same time are pressing their case in court to prove that Epstein was right while also pursuing other legal and political strategies at Los Angeles City Hall and in Sacramento.

Although Occidental now has Coastal Commission approval for exploratory wells, it must pass muster with the commission once again for the right to drill production wells. And if Occidental fails in its court appeals, the decision--with all its political portent--will revert to the council and Mayor Tom Bradley. With a slow-growth movement exerting its influence, the council has changed markedly from the 1985 council that approved the drilling plan.

“I don’t think they’ll ever drill, but it definitely gave them a boost that they didn’t deserve,” Robert Sulnick, president of the activist group No Oil Inc., said of the commission’s decision Tuesday. “There’s only one place to go and that’s to court.”

“You need to have a valid city ordinance to proceed,” Occidental attorney Maria D. Hummer said. “We feel the ordinances are valid.”

A decision is expected by the state Court of Appeal later this summer. If Occidental loses, Hummer said, “we would certainly look at our judicial remedies and (further) appeal would certainly be one of them.”

Opponents contend that the likelihood of earthquakes and slides in the area makes any drilling plan a great environmental risk.

Occidental maintains that it has developed a plan that can survive quakes and protects both the slide-prone bluffs and aesthetics of the area. Occidental was required by the city to install a water-removal system in a landslide-prone slope above the drill site. Construction of the system would be complete before two exploratory “core holes” were begun, Hummer said.

The company originally planned to wrap the rig in painted soundproofing material. But the Coastal Commission added a condition to its approval requiring a more elaborate camouflage, a plan originally proposed by Occidental for its permanent production facilities. As a result, Hummer said, the rig would be covered with a facade mimicking the bell tower of a Spanish mission. Landscaping and a wall would surround the property.

18-Month Project

The exploration project would last 18 months to two years, Hummer said. If Occidental confirms the existence of a suspected 60 million barrels of oil, the company would have to receive a separate permit before drilling 58 more wells, extracting oil and transporting it through pipelines to refineries

Meanwhile, No Oil is contesting a ruling on a different issue addressed by Epstein. No Oil disputes the judge’s finding that Occidental’s proposal did not violate the city’s community plan for the Brentwood area.

Just as Occidental vows to press its appeals, Sulnick says No Oil will do likewise--if the group can sustain fund-raising.

No Oil says it spent more than $200,000 in the last two years for its litigation against the city, paying their attorney, geologist and other experts. “It’s real expensive,” Sulnick said. “The only way Occidental could ever win is if we ever couldn’t fund a lawsuit.”

Sulnick, who also is an attorney, said he anticipates a legal challenge to the coastal panel’s approval to be based on questions about the proposal’s path through the local and state bureaucracy.

“It’s just a procedural mess,” Sulnick said.

Stunning Incident

A “no” vote Tuesday by the Coastal Commission would have been a severe blow to Occidental plans, forcing the oil company to start over in its permit procedures. Some political insiders believed a disapproval was assured when, 1 1/2 hours after the meeting began, came the stunning announcement that the state Senate Rules Committee had dismissed Commissioner Gilbert Contreras from the commission.

Contreras, a prominent San Diego County developer who was reportedly leaning in favor of Occidental’s plan, was replaced on the spot by Christine Minnehan, a Rules Committee staff member.

With Contreras gone, it appeared that Occidental would lose its application on a 6-6 deadlock. But then Commissioner Robert Franco, who had been viewed as an opponent of the drilling plan, surprised the audience by casting the final vote in favor of Occidental.

Franco later said that although he was leaning against the drilling plan, he changed his mind after visiting the site, located inland of Pacific Coast Highway across from Will Rogers State Beach. “It’s not a pristine area. . . . The place is a dump,” Franco said.

City Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents the Palisades area, said he was “really quite shocked” by the coastal panel’s vote. The ecological concerns are “so overwhelming,” he said, that “there should be no drilling on the coast.”

If the court holds the 1985 ordinances to be valid, “the whole thing could be over, unless the council considers a motion to repeal the ordinance,” said Braude deputy Cindy Miscikowski.

The council has seven votes “solidly” opposed to drilling and several others that appear changeable, Miscikowski said. The grass-roots opposition to the Occidental plans is reflective of the city’s slow-growth movement, she said, and was among key factors in the elections of Councilman Michael Woo and Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. Their predecessors, Peggy Stevenson and Pat Russell, favored drilling.

If the matter returns to City Council, it would pose an interesting decision for Bradley, who has announced plans for a reelection campaign. Bradley opposed Occidental’s plan when he ran for mayor in 1973, and he vetoed a drilling measure in 1978. In 1985, he reversed his position and approved the project after passage in the council.

The mayor’s office said this week that Bradley had no comment on the drilling issue.