Our view: Opposition to offshore drilling unites environmental groups
Just a few months ago, the environmental movement was on its back foot.
Aggressive action by the Trump Administration to walk away from renewables and EVs, and open public lands to all sorts of development, was met with a muted reaction. Affordable housing advocates were feuding with climate activists over no-growth policies and the outrageous cost of shelter.
But the Department of the Interior’s move to open federal lands to offshore drilling for the first time since 1984 has energized activists and elected officials. And a focus of that activism is the Santa Barbara Coast.
A unified lineup joined a Nov. 21 press conference where Congressman Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) was joined by state and local representatives one day after the administration announced the Department of Interior would open sites in the northeast, Florida, the Gulf Coast and California for possible drilling.
Renewed drilling would be a “recipe for disaster,” Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) said in prepared remarks. Carbajal said the current “environment of fear” in Congress means that the bipartisan support a drilling ban has enjoyed since the 1980s is unlikely.
Santa Barbara County hosts 20 of the 23 offshore platforms in California and three of the four in state waters, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Gin Ando, a representative for Ventura-based Patagonia, said the company was ready to fight to protect the $225 billion tourism industry against the risks of another offshore oil spill.
The 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara’s coast gave birth to the environmental movement and no administration has proposed new drilling since the Reagan Administration. The oil and gas industry has shown little appetite for developing new fields offshore, although Sable Offshore has proposed restarting three platforms it acquired from Exxon Mobil.
Even if bids were successful, it would take years and billions of investments to replace pipelines, build new platforms and other installations and conduct drilling operations.
A FLAWED MODEL?
From an economic perspective, the Trump Administration’s actions look rash. At an estimated 190 million barrels, the offshore field is relatively small and the costs, particularly in rebuilding a pipeline shut since 2015, will be high.
The Interior Department itself says the field accounts for only 3% of U.S. production potential. In other words, this is more like the Permian bathtub than the Permian basin and onshore reserves in Santa Barbara are only about one-third the size.
Getting drilling going would represent a win for the fossil fuel industry. But it will be a contentious fight and even the smallest incident will go viral.
That’s what happened in 2015: a pipeline rupture near the coast leaked oil into the Santa Barbara Channel and basically shut the tourism industry down for a season.
With the administration in control of Congress and the White House, there’s little that the region’s blue slate of elected representatives can actually do. But they are now energized and spoiling for a fight.
