Of the 27 oil platforms in federal waters off the coast of California, 18 are located off the coast of Santa Barbara County. Clearly, there’s lots of oil here. For environmentalists such as Linda Krop, chief counsel with the Environmental Defense Center (EDC), this reality, coupled with the imminent ascendancy of President-elect Donald Trump, is cause for serious concern. “Oil, air, water, eco-system protection — we have no idea what this administration will do,” Krop said. “Everything is on the table.” Specifically, Krop is worried that a Trump White House could add tracts under a recently approved federal leasing proposal that does not expire until 2022. Though no Pacific tracts are currently included, the new administration could amend that plan without congressional approval. “We feel we’re in the bull’s-eye,” she said. “We used to have 40 more leases [tracts leased by oil companies from the federal government for oil production] that we had to extinguish through litigation. So the interest is clearly there.”
Even if that were to happen, Krop believes any new leasing plans would still face multiple hurdles. Additional environmental analysis would be required, public hearings held, legal findings made, and the California Coastal Commission would have to be persuaded. Nothing would happen overnight.
Peter Cantle, head of Santa Barbara County’s Energy Division — created to focus on offshore oil permitting issues — said such activity is driven by the price of oil per barrel. “It ebbs and flows with political pressure, but mostly it’s market-driven.” According to Cantle, there’s no obvious price-per-barrel threshold that activates industry interest. “Every project is different. The cost of getting oil out of the ground varies,” he said. “What happens next will be driven by oil markets and changes in the price of oil.”