Supervisors May Formally Back Offshore Drilling Ban

Ventura County supervisors may join a growing list of California politicians today with a message for the new administration in Washington--more offshore drilling along the West Coast is not welcome.

Supervisor Steve Bennett, a longtime environmentalist and slow-growth lobbyist, is urging his fellow board members to pass a resolution in support of banning new federal oil and gas leases for offshore drilling. Supervisors are scheduled to vote on the resolution at today’s board meeting.

A presidential ban, passed by George H.W. Bush in June 1990 and extended by Bill Clinton in 1998 until 2012, already prevents any addition to the 79 leases dotting California’s coastline.

Several California representatives, however, worry that President George W. Bush, a former oil executive who campaigned on opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, could decide to lift the ban, clearing the way for new offshore drilling.

Additionally, Bush’s Interior secretary, Gale Norton, co-wrote a plan while working as a lawyer in the Ronald Reagan administration that supported drilling in the Arctic refuge.

“The fact that Bush could change that direction is the reason we have to do this,” Bennett said. “The Bush administration could change that direction in a month. Then where would be?”

Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) and Santa Barbara County supervisors are among those who have already voiced their opposition to any new offshore drilling.

“We’re just making a statement loud and clear that in the areas where people most likely will be impacted, they do not want to be subjected to this very risky effort,” Jackson said. “We no longer want to be threatened by offshore oil drilling’s expansion.”

Local Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and Assemblyman Tony Strickland (R-Moorpark), could not be reached for comment Monday.

The issue has been politically divisive since a devastating oil spill along the Santa Barbara coast in 1969 that killed several hundred shorebirds and blackened miles of beach.

Still, oil industry proponents point out that Californians consume about 2 million barrels of oil daily--roughly half of which originates from the waters off the coast.

The Minerals Management Service, a federal agency that makes recommendations concerning offshore oil development, is expected to release a five-year plan for oil and gas leasing in March 2002. Because of the executive ban, areas along the Pacific Coast will not be included in the plan, which would govern gas and oil leases for 2002 through 2007. But that, too, could change if Bush reverses the ban, Bennett said.

“Then the [Minerals Management Service] would have the authority to also consider our areas,” he said.

Jackson said she introduced a resolution approved by the Assembly last session that supports a state ban on new leasing and even calls for freezing action on 36 of the 79 leases already granted off the Santa Barbara coast. Those leases, which have been temporarily suspended by the Minerals Management Service, are still awaiting development.

In a letter to the agency, Jackson and O’Connell wrote, “Certainly no further leasing should occur in this area until the fate of these 36 leases has been resolved.”

In the letter, written Jan. 26, Jackson and O’Connell continue that “concerns about decreasing air quality, impacts to our marine environment and a general degradation of our coast” make “the wisdom of ever leasing any additional oil leases off California’s coast . . . questionable, at best.”