Situated among the rolling hills southeast of Santa Maria, the East Cat Canyon oil field produced oil for more than 100 years before being decommissioned in the 1990s. About six years ago, Aera Energy began trying to restore this production.
As the California-based oil and gas company has gone through its application process with Santa Barbara County, the project has met with criticism from some residents and environmental groups opposed to new oil and gas projects within the county.
To quell some of these concerns, and at the direction of county planning staff to reduce the project’s footprint, Aera Energy announced a new alternative for the development that lowers its total number of wells from 296 to 189. However, the company still plans to produce the same amount of oil by using a different drilling technique.
Aera Energy’s county representative Rick Rust said this reduction is a result of the company listening to community concerns and adjusting accordingly.
“We’re making changes. … Where there are concerns, especially like this with the well count, [the county] asked if we could make it a smaller footprint. We heard what they said,” Rust said.
According to Aera, this alternative reduces air emissions, reduces freshwater usage, minimizes visual impacts, and reduces wildlife habitat impacts. Rust said the latter is especially significant given the number of oak trees Aera proposed removing in its initial project.
Originally, Aera wanted to remove 300 trees, but this was reduced to asking to remove 189 trees under an earlier alternative. Under this latest alternative, Aera is saying 107 trees would need to be removed.
Groups such as the Environmental Defense Center (EDC) said these changes don’t go far enough.
The list of issues the EDC has with the project is extensive, including concerns over air quality due to the number of trucks needed for this project, the injection of wastewater into underground aquifers, greenhouse gas emissions, and the risk of oil spills.
EDC staff attorney Tara Messing said the reduction in well count doesn’t mitigate these concerns if the same amount of oil is being produced.
“As far as reduced well count, if they aren’t reducing overall production, you have the same impacts,” Messing said.
County planner Kathryn Lehr said the county reached out to Aera about reducing the size of its project following a meeting in January where the public had the chance to weigh in on the draft environmental impact review.
“We got public comment, and we pressed Aera to see if there was a way to downsize their project,” Lehr said.
This well reduction isn’t an entirely new project proposal, but rather an alternative to the original project. During the environmental review process, the county analyzes the original proposal, as well as a range of alternatives that offer ways to mitigate effects on the environment.
Lehr said this well reduction alternative is being analyzed and developed into the project’s final environmental impact review, which should be released in early 2020. Following the document’s release, the project will go before the county Planning Commission.
This isn’t the only project proposed in Cat Canyon that’s been reshaped in recent months. During a county Planning Commission meeting on Aug. 14, a representative from TerraCore—which purchased ERG and took over its West Cat Canyon Revitalization Project in June—asked that the project be removed from the meeting’s agenda as the company works on a new solar energy component to mitigate the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be generated.
Errin Briggs, a division supervisor with the county’s Energy, Minerals, and Compliance Division, said TerraCore hasn’t provided the county with an estimated timeframe on when it’ll resume the application process. The oil and gas company PetroRock also put its Cat Canyon project on hold six to nine months ago without citing a specific reason, Briggs said.
While these oil and gas development projects move through the planning process, the state is weighing whether or not to request the federal government to expand an aquifer exemption for the same area. If the request is moved to and granted by the Environmental Protection Agency, it’ll expand the area in Cat Canyon where oil companies can build injection wells.
The California Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources and other state agencies held a public meeting on the aquifer exemption in Santa Maria in June, where public opinion was spilt on the issue. As of press time, the state agencies hadn’t yet made their recommendation to the federal agency.
Even with two projects on hold, the concentration of new oil and gas development—along with the possible aquifer exemption—is a concern for the EDC, Messing said.
“That’s really the lens you have to look at these projects through, it’s not just one,” Messing said. “All three [projects] are going through this process at different stages.”
From Aera’s point of view, the company believes this latest alternative addresses many of the environmental concerns that have been raised about its project, Rust said. But he acknowledged that no matter what happens during the Planning Commission meeting in early 2020, this project will make its way to the county Board of Supervisors.
“No matter what happens at the Planning Commission, one side or the other is going to appeal,” Rust said. “If we get a majority of [commissioners], then our opposition is going to appeal. And if we don’t get the votes we need at the Planning Commission, we’re going to appeal.”
Reach Staff Writer Zac Ezzone at zezzone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2019.