Southern California oil spill restarts push to ban West Coast offshore oil drilling, expand marine protections

For decades, each time the federal government sought to lease hundreds of acres of federal seafloor off the Northern California coast to oil drilling companies, it ran into a wall of public opposition as sheer and insurmountable as the region’s tallest seaside cliffs.

In the 1980s, North Coast activists flooded public meetings and protested potential leases as local elected officials rushed to condemn the plans. Sonoma County sought to make the local coastline needed to support such projects inhospitable to oil companies, with voters passing a measure in 1986 that required a ballot vote to approve any onshore site to support oil drilling and exploration.

Energy interests have lost many fights in “a knock-down, drag-out, continual fight to protect this coast from offshore drilling,” said Richard Charter, a longtime coastal activist who today leads an effort of The Ocean Foundation.

The unfolding environmental disaster in Orange County, where 126,000 gallons of spilled crude oil have forced the closure of famed beaches, fouled wildlife and galvanized public health concerns, has again thrust the vulnerability of California’s offshore waters into the public consciousness.

It has again spurred supporters of expanded marine protections to call for the end of oil drilling in federal waters off California.

“Because of the work of generations of good environmental advocates, we don’t have offshore drilling in Northern California and we don’t have pipelines and this spiderweb of infrastructure that you see in Southern California,” U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said in a phone interview Monday.

The threat of fossil-fuel disasters at home and worldwide, not to mention the financial incentives to drill into the oil deposits off Northern California’s coast, will persist as long as oil production, shipping and refinement lasts, Huffman said.

President Joe Biden paused new offshore drilling leases shortly after taking office, putting to rest for now an effort by former President Donald Trump’s fossil-fuel friendly Interior Department to reshape national marine sanctuaries that prohibit undersea pipelines and drilling development.

Trump’s announcement of that review turned North Coast environmentalists’ stomachs, as it included the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank marine sanctuaries that protect waters more than 20 miles offshore ranging from Mount Tamalpais in Marin County to as far north as Point Arena in Mendocino County.

“The Trump administration told us clearly that even a marine sanctuary cannot be counted on to give you total protection from offshore drilling,” Huffman said.

North of Point Arena, protections are not as broad as in the sanctuaries to the south, a fact environmentalists like Charter are quick to note as they push for a permanent end to offshore drilling.

The spill off Huntington Beach comes as Huffman and Sen. Dianne Feinstein again try to pass legislation to permanently ban new oil and gas drilling in federal waters off the West Coast. The legislation is part of the Biden-backed Build Back Better Act, a $3.5 trillion budget bill, which is mired in political uncertainty.

For Southern California, “this is just the beginning of a very tragic series of events,” as the spill’s effects unfold, Charter said, but “it could result in permanent protection for our coast.”

There is no offshore oil production in California north of Santa Barbara. At least a half-dozen petroleum refineries line the shore of San Francisco Bay but are mostly fed crude oil by onshore pipelines or tankers, according to environmentalists and industry advocates.

Pipelines still exist and oil spills have still occurred in the bay, including significant dumps like the Cosco Buscan, a ship that dumped 53,000 of bunker fuel in 2007 after colliding with the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Oil from that spill drifted as far north as Muir beach and as far south as Pacifica, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Officials have not determined how the Southern California pipeline leaked, though the U.S. Coast Guard was investigating whether it was caused by a ship’s anchor, according to reporting in the Los Angeles Times.

“Any spill is a tragedy and we are grateful to the Coast Guard and the unified incident command for their rapid response to the spill and their work to minimize the impacts on the environment and marine life,” the Western States Petroleum Association said in a statement.

Amplify Energy Corp., the company that owns the pipeline, is not a member of the group which represents most major oil companies.

Big oil companies aren’t pursuing new drilling off the California coast because of the costs and regulatory challenges, a spokesperson for the association said.

“Our members are not chomping at the bit for new offshore production in Northern or Southern California,” the petroleum group’s spokesman Kevin Slagle said. But, he said, “blanket bans and one-size-fits-all solutions (like Huffman’s) are not the answer.”

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed Huffman’s ban before, only to see it die in the Senate. Huffman is not aware of “any offshore drilling champions” among the Democrat senators whose votes he and Feinstein will need this time around, he said. But the legislation faces opposition.

“Even now, I have some colleagues who are very close to the fossil-fuel industry who are trying to take it out and thankfully they have not been successful,” Huffman said.

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88.

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