Military Accedes to Oil Drilling Off Coast

In a move that has some North County officials crying foul, military leaders have agreed to allow offshore oil drilling near Oceanside and Carlsbad as long as derricks don’t sprout in the shipping lanes off Camp Pendleton.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) delivered that news Thursday after meeting with three Navy and Marine Corps officers in Washington to discuss the offshore oil issue.

“The good news is we’re well on the way to a strict agreement prohibiting any offshore activity off Camp Pendleton,” Packard said. “The bad news is that the battle simply is being transferred to another group of tracts . . . and we’ll have to fight it without the military.”

City officials from Oceanside and Carlsbad, meanwhile, voiced a decidedly negative reaction, with some saying they felt betrayed by the military’s decision to go along with oil exploration off the cities.

‘They Let Us Down’

“I’m really disappointed,” Carlsbad Councilwoman Ann Kulchin said. “It kind of looks like Camp Pendleton got theirs and they’re really pleased. I really feel like they let us down. I’m sorry they’re bailing out on us like this.”

But Oceanside Mayor Larry Bagley argued that the blame lies with top military brass in Washington, not with local Marine Corps leaders.

“I don’t think the problem was with Camp Pendleton or even the Marine commandant back there,” Bagley said. “It’s the secretary of the Navy that did it. I think the people out at Camp Pendleton feel the same way we do about this.”

Dana Whitson, Oceanside’s special projects director, noted that local elected officials have been shut out of any negotiations conducted by the Interior Department. On Thursday, she learned that federal officials had rejected a proposal to hold a public hearing in Oceanside to gauge the sentiment of North County residents and lawmakers.

“All these decisions were made in a vacuum as far as the local politicians and the public are concerned,” Whitson said. “We just hope the new Administration and the new Congress will be a little more responsive to local sentiments.”

The matter surfaced in mid-November when the federal Department of the Interior announced that preliminary steps were being taken toward the lease of 17 sea-bottom tracts stretching from Camp Pendleton south through Carlsbad and ranging 3 to 18 miles offshore.

In an agreement that has been approved by the military but is still pending before Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, eight of the parcels on the north and west sides of the triangular cluster of tracts have been placed off limits for drilling, Packard said.

The other nine tracts, which stretch in a rectangular band from shore, could be sold for oil exploration under the agreement, but only two drilling platforms would be allowed above the water and just on those tracts outside Camp Pendleton’s training grounds.

To reach the tracts inside the shipping lanes, an area that stretches 17 miles along the Camp Pendleton coast and 25 miles offshore, oil companies would have to erect rigs on the ocean bottom or use a technique called slant drilling. Under that scenario, oil wells would be bored from rigs off Oceanside and slanted under the ocean bottom toward the tracts in the military training grounds.

Opposed to On-Shore Facilities

Packard said the military contingent indicated, however, that it is strongly opposed to any on-shore support facilities or refineries on Camp Pendleton.

“If the cities to the north and south continue to pass resolutions opposing on-shore facilities, that should send a message to the oil industry that they’re not going to have an easy time of it,” Packard said.

The congressman met with Capt. H. David Black, head of fleet operations and readiness for the Navy; Lt. Cmdr. Dan Spiegelberg, a Navy congressional liaison, and Col. Neil Brass, Marine Corps land-use and military construction chief.

Lt. Jim Wood, a Navy Department spokesman in Washington, said he could not confirm whether military officials have signed the agreement, which has been the subject of negotiations for several months. “We don’t have the official word as yet,” Wood said.

Lorraine Lawrence, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, said the agency has not reached an agreement and none is expected until early next year. “It’s a bit premature yet,” Lawrence said, noting that the agency is still receiving public comments on the proposed sale of the 17 tracts.

Those parcels are a supplement to a massive oil-lease sale announced by the Interior Department in mid-1987 and encompassing more than 1,300 tracts extending from San Luis Obispo to Mexico. The tracts are slated for sale in spring 1990, and a final decision on which parcels to offer will not be made until 30 days before sale.

Although many tracts off San Diego County were included in the previous leasing proposal, most of those parcels, including the ones off Carlsbad and Oceanside, were removed from consideration because of concerns of local officials and the military.

In past years, Congress has approved moratoriums on the sale of tracts off the California coast, but Packard said it now appears that such legislative remedies are losing the support of federal lawmakers.

“A moratorium is becoming less and less a likely strategy,” Packard said. “Most of the rest of the country is not sympathetic to our concerns. But we’re going to pursue it again.”

If a moratorium fails, and the lease sale off Oceanside and Carlsbad goes forward, local officials hope the ban on support facilities on shore and the requirement for slant drilling or subsurface platforms will make sale of the tracts economically infeasible for oil companies. And, if all else fails, Packard said, the matter will probably be taken to court.