Santa Barbara County’s offshore oil infrastructure is decrepit, much of it even older than the corroded Plains All American Pipeline that caused last year’s devastating oil spill. It should be decommissioned to prevent yet more disasters and protect our climate. But instead, Venoco — which operates several platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel — wants Californians to hand over untapped marine sanctuary property that would keep the crude flowing through Platform Holly for decades to come.
The proposal is almost too audacious to believe. Oil production from one of Venoco’s offshore leases in the South Ellwood Field has slowed to a trickle, so it wants to trade that area for 3,400 acres in the California Coastal Sanctuary, where it would nearly quadruple its daily output. If permitted, the lease swap would breathe dirty new life into Platform Holly, the Ellwood Onshore Facility, and the Plains pipeline system that spewed more than 140,000 gallons of oil into Santa Barbara County’s environment last year.
So Venoco would get California’s help in emerging from bankruptcy, and our coastline and climate would pay the price. At a moment when this country and others around the world are struggling to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change impacts, from superstorms to ocean acidification, it makes no sense to expand oil production in California’s vulnerable coastal zone.