CASITAS SPRINGS : Petroleum Firm Postpones Meetings

USA Petroleum Co. has postponed a series of public meetings it had scheduled on the future of its 96-acre refinery property near Casitas Springs.

Company officials last week said they were delaying the meetings until they can look into issues raised by environmentalists at an informal session March 24.

But the company also disclosed that it has received two serious offers to buy the refinery complex, most of which was shut down in October, 1984.

The property, adjacent to the Ventura River near Canada Larga Road, has been on the market since 1985, with an original asking price of $16 million. None of the previous offers were accepted, said company attorney Lyle Schyler, and the firm is looking into creating its own development on the land.

“If we don’t sell the property, we are going to go forward with some sort of development plan,” Schyler said. Light industry or an office park are two possible uses if the deals being negotiated fall through, Schyler said.

The company had announced it would hold several community meetings in the coming months to determine what kind of land use would be acceptable.

“Rather than make a lot of specific plans and then find out a year down the road that the proposals are not compatible with what the community wants, we thought it would make a lot more sense to go out and see what they think,” he said.

The company had an informal meeting with local environmentalists March 24 and realized that possible ground-contamination problems and other issues had to be examined before holding the public meetings, said Sharon Browning, a USA Petroleum consultant. Members of Citizens to Preserve the Ojai, Friends of the Ventura River, the Ventura County Environmental Coalition and other local groups participated in the March 24 meeting, she said.

Stan Greene, president of Citizens to Preserve the Ojai, said his organization would prefer to see little or no development of the property.