The draft environmental impact report is out for the first of several potential new oil drilling projects in Santa Barbara County. Pacific Coast Energy Company (CPEC) is proposing to add 96 new cyclically steamed wells to the 96 cyclically steamed wells it already operates on Orcutt Hill.
The project is known as the Orcutt Hill Resource Enhancement Plan, and it would bring the oil company’s total well count to 192. The Santa Barbara County Planning and Development Department released the draft report for the project on Feb. 9, and the public has 45 days to respond.
One of the most controversial components in the last big oil project approved by the county was greenhouse gas emissions. Santa Maria Energy got approval to drill 110 cyclically steamed wells in November 2013, but the county placed an emissions caveat on the project. The company is only allowed 10,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, and anything over that cap will need to be mitigated, most likely by purchasing greenhouse gas credits through California’s Cap-and-Trade system.
That topic “really wasn’t addressed” in the recently released environmental impact report for PCEC’s new project, according to PCEC spokesperson Jim Bray.
“The county is struggling to come up with a standard for what’s allowed,” Bray said, adding that although the county imposed restrictions on the Santa Maria Energy project, there isn’t a uniform set standard for greenhouse gas emissions in Santa Barbara County. He said he attended the county’s recent workshops regarding greenhouse gas emissions, which were held the second week of February, and got the impression that it was something the county was struggling to define.
During the workshops, the planning department discussed what California Environmental Quality Act guidelines are for greenhouse gas emissions, what other cities in the state are doing, and what it would mean for the county to set hardline standards for greenhouse gas emissions.
As far as PCEC’s proposed project is concerned, it wouldn’t emit any more emissions than the company was permitted to emit in 1996, when the original 96-well project was approved. The company said its new project is possible “due to dramatic efficiency improvements” in its current cyclic steaming operations. “The amount of steam required for production has fallen by more than half since PCEC began steaming on the site in 2006,” a press release said.
Bray said because of this efficiency, PCEC is only using half of the steam-generating capacity of the three generators on its site, and the proposed project would use up the remainder of that capacity.
A public hearing will be held on March 5 at 6 p.m. to receive comments on the draft environmental impact report. The meeting will be in the Santa Barbara County Supervisors Conference Room at the Betteravia Government Center, 115 E. Lakeside Parkway in Santa Maria. Find a copy of the report at sbcountyplanning.org.
This article appears in Feb 19-26, 2015.