Most of the oil produced in and around the Santa Maria Valley is considered “heavy.” It’s not refined into gasoline or jet fuel. Rather, it’s often used to make products like asphalt—but maybe not for very much longer.
“That’s what we specialize in, as most of the oil production onshore in Northern Santa Barbara county does,” Eric Vasquez with Asphalta LLC told the county Planning Commission on April 8. “I believe this ban will hurt people. … You cannot drive an electric car on dirt. It just does not happen.”
His voice joined several others who aimed to convince decision-makers to tap the brakes on sending a ban on drilling new oil and gas wells to the county Board of Supervisors. But planning commissioners did the opposite, voting 3-2 along South/North County lines to pass the ordinance to the governing body that requested it in the first place.
“Our job and staff’s job is to take things that the board wants to do, and we process them as well as we can to make sure that they’re the best ordinance, the best project, whatever,” 3rd District Commissioner John Parke said during the meeting. “At least three members of the board made it extremely clear what they wanted. … So that’s why I’m going to vote for it.”
Last October, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2, with the North County supervisors dissenting, to direct staff to develop the prohibition on drilling new oil and gas wells as well as to create a long-term plan to phase out exist oil and gas operations in the county. Leaning on the county’s 2030 Climate Action Plan, county staff said the goal is to address greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas processing and extraction. The county plans to tackle it in two phases, with the ban on future drilling in the first phase.
‘What we do matters, and we can be an example to others.’
—Katie Davis, Santa Barbara County resident
Parke also expressed reservations with the first phase plan, saying that he hoped that county staff would engage with the local industry before moving forward with the second phase of the plan. Staff told commissioners that no conversations took place with local oil and gas producers regarding the future ban.
“I think we need to distinguish between Big Oil and little oil,” he said. “Little oil is generally local people. … The landowners, the people who run it, work for it. … Many of us run into them all the time.”
“Little oil, they’re more collaborative. And I hope that somewhere in this process, we have that collaboration occur,” he added.
Janet Blevins from Lompoc said that she’d been fighting oil development in the county for 15 years. The effects of climate change, she said, are relatively minor in Santa Barbara County, but that’s not the case in other parts of the world.
The county, resident and environmental activist Katie Davis told commissioners, has a responsibility to do what it can when it comes to climate change.
“What we do matters, and we can be an example to others,” Davis said. “We’re heading in the right direction.”
Rich Field with Pacific Coast Energy Company, which has oil operations on Orcutt Hill, said that anything the county does to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may feel good, but it “isn’t going to do anything” to impact global emissions.
County residents will still depend on oil whether it’s produced locally or not, Ted Cordova with E&B Natural Resources in Cuyama said.
“That’s not a reduction,” he told commissioners. “It’s a transfer of impact.”
This article appears in April 16 – April 23, 2026.