Coastal Panel Fights Drilling Plans

The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously Thursday to object to federal efforts to extend three dozen oil and gas leases off the state’s coastline so that oil companies could begin exploratory drilling.

The commission, which includes appointees of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, concluded that federal authorities failed to provide sufficient information on the potential for oil spills and other environmental risks.

The vote came only days after President Bush signed comprehensive energy legislation to push for more domestic oil production.

The disagreement focuses on 36 offshore oil tracts between Oxnard and San Luis Obispo that were leased to oil companies decades ago but never developed into working undersea oil fields.

The rest of the state’s coastline is protected by moratoriums on new drilling leases imposed by Congress and presidential order. But the 36 tracts at issue were leased before the moratoriums took effect, and there has been a renewed push to develop them at a time of record oil prices.

The commission won the right to review any extension of these leases in a judicial decision affirmed by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002. The commissioners voted Thursday to return immediately to court if federal officials ignore the state’s objections.

Commission Chairwoman Meg Caldwell and her colleagues were incensed that officials from the U.S. Minerals Management Service failed to show up at Thursday’s public meeting.

“I consider this an affront to the coastal commission, the federal courts and the people of California,” said Caldwell, a Schwarzenegger appointee.

“It seems to suggest that they are going to blow us off,” said Peter Douglas, the commission’s executive director. “If they override the commission, which they can do ... we want to be prepared” to go to court.

In response to the commission’s vote, the federal Minerals Management Service issued a statement saying it was “disappointed” by the commission’s objections. The federal agency said it would review the state’s position and then determine “the best course to follow” that honors federal laws and the “varied and often conflicting interests” of oil companies that hold the leases and of state and local communities.

The 36 offshore tracts, which could tap into an estimated 512 million barrels of oil, have been the focus of regulatory and legal battles almost since they were leased to oil companies between 1968 and 1982.

Located at least three miles off the coast of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, the leases were supposed to expire within five to 10 years if oil companies did not make diligent progress in developing the sites.

But the Minerals Management Service has repeatedly extended them, sometimes at the behest of oil companies waiting for a surge in oil prices. The dozen companies that own the leases are pressing a lawsuit in federal court, demanding that the federal government allow them to drill or buy back the leases for more than $1 billion.

The Minerals Management Service has been attempting to extend the leases one more time. The fight with the commission has been over the federal government’s right to act unilaterally, without approval from state officials.

All of this comes as Congress has approved and President Bush has signed the Energy Policy Act, which seeks to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Among many other provisions, the new law orders the Minerals Management Service to update inventories of all of the untapped offshore reserves as part of the push for domestic drilling.

The first inventory is due in six months -- not enough time, according to the Minerals Management Service, to do much more than pull together all existing data.

It’s not feasible in such a short time, the agency said, to conduct a thorough exploration of the 36 undersea tracts.

Doing so would involve seismic surveys involving the firing of powerful air guns into the seafloor, reading the acoustic signals that bounce back and using the data to map pockets of oil and gas.

The coastal commission has raised concerns about the effect of the loud sounds of the air guns on marine mammals, which rely on sensitive hearing to find food and each other and to navigate the seas.

A related lawsuit, brought by a dozen environmental and conservation groups, has also argued that the Minerals Management Service has failed to adequately assess the potential risk of harm from using the air guns.

Environmental lawyers, who plan to argue the case in federal court today, are asking for the Minerals Management Service to produce an environmental impact statement on acoustic risks, among other environmental problems.

In response to lawyers’ queries, the Minerals Management Service has released a number of internal memos and e-mails showing that the federal agency realized it understated the risk to marine mammals and discussing what steps should be taken to protect them.

Drew Caputo, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the documents show that the agency knew its findings were wrong and failed to correct them, as required by federal law.

In general, the Minerals Management Service concluded that there would be no significant environmental effects by extending the 36 leases. It has argued all along that a complete analysis of possible effects wasn’t required at this stage of lease extension. More detailed environmental studies could come later in the process, when permits for drilling or oil production are sought.

But coastal commission lawyers said there was a possibility that the federal agency would rely on old drilling plans and, thus, not need to come back before the commission for approvals.

Commission staff members said that federal officials declined to provide sufficient data on the size of worst-case oil spills, the probability of a major spill or where currents would carry the crude oil in such events.

Some of the undeveloped offshore tracts could be drilled from existing oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel.

The Minerals Management Service declined to give the coastal commission its latest structural inspection reports of the existing platforms and undersea pipelines. The commission wanted to review the inspection reports to determine whether the platforms and pipes have the structural integrity to last for two or three decades beyond their original life expectancy.

With federal and oil company officials absent from Thursday’s meeting, the discussion was one-sided. Assemblyman Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) led a group of state and local officials who urged the commission to stand up to what he characterized as the Bush administration’s disregard for states’ rights.

Linda Krop, chief counsel for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center, said developing the 36 offshore tracts would expose Southern and Central California to 25 more years of oil spill risks.

Besides the catastrophic, 80,000-barrel spill in 1969 off Santa Barbara’s beaches, she said, smaller spills have occurred as recently as 1997. That one, off Point Arguello, involved only 163 barrels, but it spread across 40 miles of coastline along Vandenberg Air Force Base, leaving hundreds of seabirds helpless and dying from oiled feathers.

“Had the spill occurred in an urban area, as opposed to Vandenberg,” Krop said, “the impacts to public recreation and tourism would have been enormous.”