Bush Plan to Omit Last California Coast Oil Tracts

The Bush Administration has decided to withdraw 87 remaining tracts off the California coast from its new five-year plan for federal oil and gas leasing on the outer continental shelf.

Totaling some 500,000 acres off Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, the tracts had been left vulnerable to development in 1990, when President Bush put the rest of the federal government’s offshore tracts along the state’s coastline off limits until the year 2000.

The announcement of the decision on the last tracts, ranging from 5,000 to 5,700 acres each, is to be made today when the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service releases its new five-year plan for offshore oil development.

Conveniently, the report comes a week before a planned two-day campaign trip to the state by President Bush.

California political leaders, including Gov. Pete Wilson, Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) and Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Palo Alto), have been imploring the Administration to protect the area ever since Bush took the rest of the California coastal tracts out of consideration.

“I have felt from the beginning that the Santa Barbara channel area should not be treated any differently,” Lagomarsino said Thursday. “I have been trying to get this done ever since President Bush made his announcement on the other areas.”

Campbell said he is optimistic that the area will now remain protected from lease sale even beyond the new five-year plan.

Congress was already moving toward a ban on the sale of any new leases in the area.

The Senate version of omnibus energy legislation currently under consideration would prevent any lease sales in the area until the turn of the century and similar language is included in two energy bills pending in the House.

The outer continental shelf begins several miles from the shoreline, just beyond state-controlled waters.