Palisades Oil Is Los Angeles’ Oil--Go for It!

While much has been said about state Sen. David A. Roberti’s firing of a coastal commissioner in a last-ditch effort to kill Occidental Petroleum’s proposed drilling project in the Pacific Palisades, two important points should be kept in mind: Politics aside, Los Angeles needs the tax revenues that can be generated by this project, and America needs the oil.

Over the last 50 years, Los Angeles has generated millions of dollars from urban drilling projects to support police and fire protection, education and recreation projects. Currently, oil tax revenues are being generated at 17 drill sites across the city. The oil is being produced safely, efficiently and with no damage to the environment.

The Palisades project is merely a continuation of this long-standing Los Angeles policy. If the application in the Palisades is approved and, later, final production proceeds, the city and our schools will derive as much as $100 million from new tax revenues alone. If city royalties on city-owned land are included, Los Angeles could receive up to $200 million over the life of the field. At this rate, the Palisades project alone could put 130 new police officers on the streets--with no added cost to the city.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has consistently supported Occidental’s efforts in the Palisades. We believe, as the Coastal Commission agreed, that the company should be allowed to proceed with two exploratory wells at the site to determine the quality and extent of these valuable reserves. Assuming that estimates of 25 million to 60 million barrels are correct, the oil should be produced to generate these needed revenues and to help ease our nation’s ever-increasing dependence on foreign oil.

While opponents argue that the Palisades project would fuel our nation only for a few days, the same can be said of almost any new field in the continental United States. A better argument is that the oil probably could fuel Los Angeles for a year, and Occidental has pledged to dedicate all of the oil to the city in case of an energy emergency.

This project really is fight between the haves and the have-nots. Currently, the Palisades is the only area in our city where known oil reserves are not being produced for the benefit of all. Opponents have long enjoyed the economic benefits of safe urban drilling in other parts of the city, but when it comes to producing oil reserves in the Palisades, they want no part of it, however safe or environmentally sound.

Even the Coastal Commission staff, which recommended denial of Occidental’s application largely for aesthetic reasons, agreed that the project can be done safely and is geologically sound. Fortunately, the commission disagreed with the staff’s recommendation to deny and voted to permit the exploration phase of the project to go forward. The majority, perhaps, was convinced that Occidental’s plan to treat the facilities architecturally in a Spanish mission style, with professional landscaping, will make the site look better during the drilling phase than it does now. After the drilling phase the tower would be removed, leaving only subsurface wells.

Beyond the new city revenues to be produced from the project, Occidental’s plans to install at its own expense a dewatering system to stabilize the bluffs is reason alone for the community to support this project. Even the city’s own experts have testified that the bluffs would be more stable with the project than they currently are now without the dewatering system.

Approval of this project will provide jobs, contribute positively to our balance-of-payments problem and help make this country less dependent on certain foreign sources of energy.

The Occidental project has been reviewed and studied more than any other project of this nature in the history of Los Angeles. Every conceivable objection raised by opponents has been answered satisfactorily. And now, with American sailors escorting oil tankers in the dangerous Persian Gulf, and with our neighborhoods crying out for more police protection, it is time the Palisades contributes its fair share of oil and revenues for the general good--as the rest of the city has done for decades.