U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) recently reintroduced the California Clean Coast Act to the House of Representatives in order to protect the state from future offshore oil drilling.
The bill aims to permanently ban future offshore oil and gas leasing off the Central Coast and the rest of California. Carbajal first introduced the bill in 2017. In 2019, the bill passed in the House as part of a package of offshore drilling legislation, but it was not signed into law, Carbajal told the Sun via email.
“I’m introducing my California Clean Coast Act again because we need to make it clear, once and for all, that we want to take our coastlines off Big Oil’s shopping list, permanently,” he said. “I have worked to build bipartisan consensus like this in the past, and I am not giving up hope.”
Carbajal reintroduced the bill in light of a new Republican majority in the House, which passed another bill that would open public land to oil companies “despite Big Oil having millions of acres of public lands at their disposal and thousands of unused oil drilling licenses,” he said.
The California Clean Coast Act wouldn’t impact current offshore leases—including ExxonMobil’s Santa Ynez Unit in Santa Barbara County, said Linda Krop, chief counsel at the Environmental Defense Center.
“It wouldn’t directly affect Exxon’s attempts to restart its existing platforms, but we’re fighting that on different fronts,” Krop said.
A federal judge allowed the Environmental Defense Center (EDC)—and other conservation and indigenous groups—to help legally defend Santa Barbara County after Exxon filed a lawsuit against the county over its denial of an oil trucking proposal, claiming the company’s U.S. and California constitutional rights to private property and its use were violated.
The denied project proposed trucking crude oil along highways 101 and 166 from its Las Flores Canyon processing facility to the Santa Maria Pump Station or to the Plains Pentland Terminal in Kern County, according to previous Sun reporting.
The EDC filed its opening brief in federal court on Feb. 13 with Exxon’s due May 1, and the first hearing is scheduled for June 16, Krop said. The brief argued that the county Board of Supervisors acted within its discretion and made a decision based on a “plethora of evidence,” ranging from local testimonies to oil tanker truck accident reports on highways 101 and 166.
“In this case, the board appropriately denied ExxonMobil’s application because it was inconsistent with county ordinances protecting the public health, safety, and welfare, as well as neighborhood compatibility,” the brief states. “In an effort to respond to ExxonMobil’s assertions that the benefits of the project outweighed its impacts, the board also adopted a finding that the benefits did not outweigh the substantial risks and significant impacts of the proposed project.”
After the oil giant filed its lawsuit, Exxon sold its Santa Ynez Unit onshore and offshore facilities—which have been closed since the Plains All American Pipeline rupture and oil spill in 2015. Exxon had hoped to restart operations with the trucking proposal. Sable Offshore Corporation purchased the unit for $643 million. The deal is part of a merger between Sable and SPAC Flame Acquisition Corporation.
Since the oil drilling lease already exists, the California Clean Coast Act would not impact the sale or follow-up attempts to restart the platforms, Krop added, and the EDC will monitor the bill as it moves forward in the legislative process.
“Historically, opposition to offshore oil development in California has been a bipartisan issue,” Krop said. “Because the bill is limited [to] California, hopefully it does pass.”
ExxonMobil declined to comment at this time.
This article appears in Mar 2-9, 2023.