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California State Lands Commission stops renewed oil drilling off the California coast; editorial says lack of disclosure to blame

Posted by: Maven on January 31, 2009 at 7:23 am

From YubaNet.com:

On a two-to-one vote, the California State Lands Commission, chaired by Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, today denied the first new oil lease in state waters in almost 40 years.

Garamendi, former Deputy Interior Secretary under President Bill Clinton, argued strongly that the plan would signal that California wants to open offshore drilling and supporters would push for more oil exploration on the West Coast.

“I refuse to let this lease move forward,” Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi said. “Approving a drilling proposal will undercut congressional efforts to reintroduce a federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling earlier lifted by the Bush Administration.”

The Lieutenant Governor chairs the three-member State Lands Commission, which considered the request to lease land to the Plains Exploration & Production Company to expand drilling off the coast of California.

The Lieutenant Governor, who has consistently opposed offshore drilling, recently spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and other members of the California congressional delegation who had significant concerns about the lease undercutting their attempts to reintroduce a federal moratorium on oil exploration off the coast.

Read more from YubaNet.com by clicking here.

The deal between the environmentalists and the oil interests was a ‘jaw-dropping’ moment, says the LA Times editorial, but lack of disclosure is what really killed the deal:

No new drilling in state waters has been approved since 1969, under a very sound philosophy that the things that would be harmed by drilling — the marine life and beaches destroyed by spills — are more valuable than the oil that would be extracted. Yet it’s possible to craft compromises that compensate for environmental damage and provide economic benefits. The Santa Barbara deal came within a hairbreadth of achieving that but was rightly rejected because of bad tactics and a lack of enforcement mechanisms.

Under the publicly disclosed terms of the deal, Plains Exploration & Production Co., which owns a platform in federal waters just beyond the three-mile limit controlled by the state, would have drilled several wells from the platform into oil reserves on state property. In return, it would have closed that platform, three others it operates off Santa Barbara and two onshore processing facilities by 2022 and donated 4,000 acres of land for preservation. Over the life of the project, the state would have collected up to $5 billion in tax revenues.

Bizarrely, the company and the environmental groups that were parties to the bargain kept the rest of its terms confidential. It is not unheard of for environmentalists to sell out the public interest for political or financial reasons, and no elected official should ever approve a secret deal that affects public resources. The company finally announced that it would disclose the full agreement during Thursday’s Lands Commission hearing, but that was months too late.

Read more of this editorial from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.

January 31, 2009 · Filed Under Oceans & Beaches

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