Another oil project is in the works for Santa Barbara County; this time the new wells are slated for Cat Canyon. On March 3, Santa Barbara County Supervisors authorized an “agreement for services” with a company that will conduct an environmental impact report on ERG Resources’ proposed project.
Development plans propose 233 new cyclically steamed oil wells, the reactivation of four historic steam generators (which were permitted and used under previous plans), piping for the proposed wells, and replacement of an existing natural gas pipeline. Kevin Drude, deputy director of the Santa Barbara County Planning Department Energy and Minerals Division, said ERG also has a 3-mile-long oil pipeline project in the works. The Foxen Petroleum Pipeline Project would run along Foxen Canyon Road and help connect Cat Canyon oil to the Phillips 66 pipeline.
“It’s not very long, but it’s sized in anticipation of other development, not just theirs,” Drude said, adding that a company named Aera Energy is looking to start a project on its property in Cat Canyon, potentially with more wells than ERG’s proposing. “It gets trucks off the road. … Nobody wants to go wine tasting and see trucks. That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
The Foxen project is expected to go before the county Planning Commission on March 11, according to Drude. Pacific Coast Energy Company (PCEC) already has a draft environmental impact report out on its new project in the Orcutt Hills, for which the public comment period closes on March 26. There will be a public hearing on the PCEC project March 5 at the Betteravia Government Center at 6 p.m.
One of the things that would affect all of the proposed and potential projects moving into line at the county’s planning and development department is the potential rule for a county greenhouse gas emissions limit that is in the works.
“All of these operators are going to be above, I think, any threshold the Board of Supervisors would adopt,” Drude said. “Certainly above 10,000 and certainly above 25,000.”
He said the projects would potentially output upwards of 40,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. The county is currently looking at what it would mean to set a bright line of 10,000 or 25,000 metric tons per year for each project. Those emissions would then need to be mitigated through the purchase of greenhouse gas emission credits, which are banked by companies who have cut their greenhouse gas output.
County supervisors placed a 10,000-metric-ton per year limit on Santa Maria Energy’s project, which was approved for development last year. Drude said the number of companies coming forward with planned drilling operations is surprising, considering the way oil prices have dropped year after year, but added that the planning department was anticipating the influx of projects using cyclic steam injection, which would have been banned by Measure P—voters opted against the measure in November 2014.
“That’s why [the oil companies] were fighting so hard against Measure P,” he said.
This article appears in Mar 5-12, 2015.
