New Group Vows Fight to Support Coast Oil Drilling

A newly formed citizens committee, heavily financed by Occidental Petroleum Corp. and led by several prominent political figures, vowed Tuesday to wage an all-out assault on a proposed ballot measure that would prevent Occidental from drilling for oil in the Pacific Palisades.

Called the Los Angeles Public and Coastal Protection Committee, the new organization chaired by former California Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, announced that it will base its pro-drilling campaign on two messages: “fairness and sharing.” The underlying theme is that opponents of Pacific Palisades oil drilling never objected to drilling in other parts of the city and should not do so there either.

“We believe that Los Angeles can’t afford to become a city divided against itself,” Brown said. “We’ve prospered in the past because we’ve been willing to share and cooperate.”

Legal Problems Loom

Besides fairness and sharing, another more ominous message will likely become part of the pro-drilling campaign. If the initiative passes, organization leaders said, the city faces lawsuits from Occidental and Pacific Palisades landowners who would lose royalties if the drilling plan is killed. Such litigation could drive court-awarded damages “as high as a billion dollars,” Brown said.

Drilling opponents dismissed such claims as unfounded.

Councilmen Marvin Braude and Zev Yaroslavsky as well as Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) announced last summer that they will try to qualify an initiative for next November’s ballot to repeal the 1985 ordinances granting Occidental drilling rights in the Pacific Palisades. The signature-gathering effort has not begun, however, because Braude is trying to win City Council backing to accomplish the same thing.

But less than an hour after the pro-Occidental group announced its formation, Braude’s proposed repeal ordinance suffered a major setback. City Atty. James Hahn’s office disqualified the city Planning Commission from considering Braude’s repeal motion. Hahn ruled that commission President Daniel P. Garcia had a conflict of interest because his law firm was retained by Occidental in 1986.

The city attorney’s ruling placed Braude’s motion in jeopardy because it will now be considered by the Board of Referred Powers, a panel consisting of five City Council members, including three believed to be sympathetic to Occidental. A negative vote by the board would mean that 10 votes, rather than eight, would be needed for passage by the City Council and that 12 votes, not 10, would be necessary to override any mayoral veto.

Despite the setback, Braude said after Hahn’s ruling that he will continue to push for passage of the motion. He said he will attempt a procedural maneuver as a member of the Board of Referred Powers to make City Council passage of the repeal ordinance easier.

Failure of Braude Motion Predicted

Braude said that if the board makes no recommendation on the repeal motion, then his proposal would require only eight votes in the City Council for passage and 10 votes for a veto override. Mayor Tom Bradley, who signed the drilling ordinances in 1985, said he will not comment on Braude’s latest motion until it is on his desk.

If the Braude motion fails in the council, drilling foes plan to concentrate their efforts on the voter initiative.

Initiative opponents, led by former Gov. Brown; William Robertson, executive secretary of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor; former Police Chief Tom Reddin and Occidental attorney Michael (Mickey) Kantor, said at Tuesday’s press conference that they expect Braude’s motion to fail and that there eventually will be a ballot measure.

Kantor, a partner in the politically potent Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg & Phillips law firm, as well as a veteran of many political campaigns, told reporters that he expects each side to spend more than a million dollars in any initiative campaign. Acknowledging that Occidental has a vested interest in protecting the drilling rights, Kantor said that “obviously, it’s only natural that the oil company would contribute substantial money to fight this particular initiative, were it to become a reality.”

Brown and others focused more on the self-interests they ascribed to Pacific Palisades drilling opponents than on the virtues of the Occidental drilling plan.

The Rev. H. H. Brookins, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and one of the city’s most influential black political figures, noted that 17 other oil drilling sites exist around the city and that Palisades drilling foes never complained about them. Pressed by a reporter, Brookins said that he believes the issue had become one of “white versus black” and “rich versus poor.”

“What is good for the goose is good for the gander,” Brookins said.

Brown agreed. “Our citizens committee has been formed because we don’t think the Palisades--or any part of Los Angeles--should become a private preserve, a separate interest group with a special status, unwilling to contribute its fair share,” Brown said. “If the project goes ahead as planned, the citizens of Los Angeles will gain from $100 million to $200 million for our schools and basic services like police and parks.”

The former governor, in response to a question, said that he is a friend of Occidental Chairman Armand Hammer but that Hammer had not asked him to participate in the committee. Hammer has fought for nearly two decades to win the rights to drill in the Palisades.

Braude, responding to the pro-drilling committee’s formation, said he expects Occidental to spend up to $7 million to defeat the initiative if it gets on the ballot.

“I expect them to continue to threaten and badger me and the council and the public,” Braude said. “It is the grossest kind of arrogance to buy the right to desecrate the coastline. I’ll be damned if I’ll be intimidated by Occidental and their threats. . . .”