Battle for the Coastline : Environment: State and local officials have asked the federal government to scrap proposal to lease 87 offshore tracts from Ventura to Morro Bay.

From Ventura City Hall to the governor’s mansion, public officials are waging a campaign to protect California’s biggest offshore oil patch from drilling in untapped areas of the continental shelf.

In pleas sent to the nation’s capital, state and local officials have asked the federal government to back off its proposal to open 500,000 more acres to new offshore oil drilling along the stretch of coastline from Ventura to Morro Bay.

The U.S. Department of the Interior wants to lease 87 three-mile-square tracts in the Santa Barbara Channel and the Santa Maria Basin in 1996, if scientific studies show new drilling can be done without environmental harm.

These are the only areas left unprotected by President Bush’s decision a year ago to ban drilling along 99% of the coastline for a decade because the energy benefits were outweighed by the environmental risk.

Yet area officials argue that this section of the coast already is loaded with offshore oil platforms and the potential for more. And while the oil industry wants as much new territory as possible opened to exploration, it does not believe that the proposed leasing will yield a major find.

Federal waters off Santa Barbara and Ventura counties contain 97 of the 104 tracts leased along the entire California coast. The section of coastline is dotted with 19 of the 23 oil platforms in federally controlled waters, which begin three miles from shore.

“Many of us feel we have done more than our fair share here in the Santa Barbara Channel,” state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) said.

California Gov. Pete Wilson led offshore oil opponents last month in asking the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service to scrap auction plans because “the proposed 87 tracts lie in areas of extreme environmental sensitivity.”

In the broadest context, state and local officials object to opening the area to increased risk of an oil spill until the Bush Administration adopts a national energy policy that demonstrates an immediate need to tap the 330 million to 660 million barrels of oil estimated to lie under these tracts.

In the narrower view, they worry about the potential hazards of any new development that could harm sea life in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary or despoil scenic coastal communities that rely heavily on tourist dollars.

It was this area, they point out, that was blackened by 77,000 barrels of crude oil in 1969 from the “blowout” of a Union Oil Co. platform off the Santa Barbara shore.

A focus of particular concern is that 17 of the proposed 87 tracts fall in shipping lanes that run through the Santa Barbara Channel. Currently, no platforms have been built in the lanes. But area officials fear that leasing and development in the lanes could lead to a collision between a freighter and an oil platform.

“It’s crazy to put the Santa Barbara Channel in that type of jeopardy,” said Steven Chase, head of environmental programs for the city of Ventura. “I don’t tell my kids, ‘Go ahead and play in the street, but be careful.’ I don’t let them play in the street.”

Oil companies also hold leases to 35 tracts and operate seven oil platforms in state waters close to the shorelines of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. But the debate over additional leasing in state waters ended two years ago when the State Lands Commission decided it would not lease any more tracts and would turn all unleased areas into a coastal sanctuary. State waters extend three miles from shore.

Bush tried to defuse the politically charged issue of drilling in federal waters last June with his exclusion of nearly all of California from national leasing plans. He decided to offer the 87 tracts for leasing, he said, because they already had nearby production and a high potential for oil discovery.

Bush also promised no leasing would go forward until studies showed further development could be done in an environmentally safe manner.

Barry Williamson, director of the Minerals Management Service, said his agency has begun those studies and a decision should be made in 1994 whether to lease the proposed tracts.

“From a public policy standpoint, we need the offshore oil for the nation, and if we can drill for it, we should,” Williamson said. “We were in the Persian Gulf for oil. We shouldn’t have this not-in-my-back-yard syndrome. This is important to the nation.”

But Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) believes it is unfair to concentrate all of the state’s offshore drilling along this stretch of coastline.

Lagomarsino said he complained to Bush last June at a White House barbecue held the same day as the President’s offshore oil announcement. Lagomarsino said Bush appeared surprised at his objections to leasing in the Santa Barbara Channel. “My impression is that he thought everybody would be pleased with it.”

Lagomarsino supports offshore drilling in principle. He has been one of the few members of the California delegation from a coastal area who has not joined the annual rite in Congress of placing a yearlong moratorium on all leasing off the state’s coastline. The ritual began in 1981 when former Interior Secretary James Watt tried to open the whole coastline for offshore oil development.

A bipartisan majority of the delegation is seeking its 10th annual moratorium. And Lagomarsino now finds himself in the awkward position of refusing to join a congressional strategy that could protect his coastal district from additional offshore leasing.

“The problem with Bob is that he has never supported the moratorium and has spoken against it and is probably having difficulty changing his position,” said Rep. Leon Panetta (D-Monterey), a leading offshore oil drilling opponent.

Lagomarsino said he considers it irresponsible to oppose all offshore oil drilling while the nation imports half of its oil. Still, he said the burden of drilling should be spread around.

Upon the request of the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors, Lagomarsino introduced a bill last week to provide the Santa Barbara Channel and Santa Maria Basin with the same 10-year protection from new leases as the rest of the coast.

The Minerals Management Service is pushing the 87 tracts because they overlay what government scientists estimate to be as much as 660 million barrels of recoverable oil and possibly 1.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Although the oil industry is keenly interested in more offshore development, industry experts question why the federal government picked these 87 tracts. In every case except for one tract, oil companies either have leased and turned back the tracts or passed over them at previous auctions.

“This is not an area where we see the greatest potential for development,” said Elsa Rosenberg of the Western States Petroleum Assn., which represents 50 oil companies in the region. But she said companies might become interested in these tracts, particularly if oil prices go up.

At least one oil company has grown wary of sinking more money into the Santa Barbara Channel after having trouble getting all the permits needed to bring oil from the area to market. So far, 17 of the existing 97 leased tracts have been developed for oil production.

“Based on our experience at Point Arguello, it would be very difficult for us to invest any more of our shareholders’ money in leases off the coast of California,” said G.M. (Mike) Marcy, a spokesman for Chevron U.S.A. Inc. in Ventura.

Despite a $2.5-billion investment, Chevron has yet to reap a single drop of the estimated 340 million barrels of oil beneath its Point Arguello tracts, the largest discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay.

The sticking point is Santa Barbara County’s insistence that the oil be carried by pipeline to oil refineries, rather than using oil tankers. Chevron wants to use tankers for the next few years until a pipeline can be built. “Clearly, public sentiment and the attitude of local officials is running against offshore development,” Marcy said. “We’ve seen the writing on the wall.”

Bill Douros, deputy energy director for Santa Barbara County, said area officials do not oppose offshore development done with proper environmental safeguards. “We’re for reasoned development,” he said.

State and federal studies have concluded in recent years that a major oil spill remains a real threat to the region.

The State Lands Commission reported two years ago that the area’s sensitive estuaries and marine sanctuaries would be virtually defenseless against a disaster the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

And the Minerals Management Service has calculated a 94% chance of a major oil spill off the Southern California coast during the next 30 years. This study includes the risk of tankers carrying oil to domestic refineries from Alaska or overseas.

Industry experience shows that pipelines are far safer than tankers and the Minerals Management Service now favors using pipelines to carry oil from offshore rigs, though it does not require them.

Drilling technology has come a long way since the 1969 Union Oil platform blowout sullied beaches along Santa Barbara and Ventura counties and in the Channel Islands. Experts say it is virtually impossible now for a similar blowout to occur.

Furthermore, oil companies in the area have developed a cooperative cleanup crew in Carpinteria, called Clean Seas, to handle small and medium-size spills. In addition, a consortium of big oil companies is pouring $60 million into the Port of Hueneme to make it the first of five regional centers in the nation capable of handling a major spill.

“What worries me as much as a spill is the routine effects of a rig,” said Stephen C. Jameson, manager of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

The sanctuary forbids drilling within six miles of the islands, except for a few areas leased by Chevron and Unocal before the area’s boundaries were designated in 1980. Thirteen of the 87 tracts proposed for auction border on the sanctuary.

“If they put rigs right up next to the boundaries,” Jameson said, “the drilling muds and pollutants are going to flow into the sanctuary and affect the most sensitive organisms.”

Offshore Oil Drilling

Nearly all oil-drilling sites off the California coast are concentrated near Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

87 tracts, generally 3 miles square, proposed for oil-drilling leases by the federal government in mid-1996.

97 tracts currently leased. Less than one-fifth have been developed and are producing oil.

Existing offshore oil platforms.

Source: U.S. Minerals Management Service