The Santa Barbara County Water Guardians—an all-volunteer group of concerned local citizens—filed papers with Santa Barbara County on March 18 for a voter initiative aimed at banning enhanced oil extraction techniques such as hydraulic fracturing and cyclic steam injection.
Rebecca Claassen, a volunteer with the water guardian coalition, said that after the county looks through the paperwork, the water guardians will need to gather 13,000 signatures from registered voters in Santa Barbara County before the second week of May in order to get the initiative on the November ballot.
Claassen said the initiative would specifically target all new projects, and leave alone already approved and operating projects, such as the 136-oil-well Santa Maria Energy project approved last year.
“We’re facing a big boom here,” Claassen said. “We see protecting our limited water resources as the most important thing right now … high-intensity extraction has contaminated water supplies in other areas, and we don’t think we can tolerate that risk.”
The Environmental Protection Agency began studying hydraulic fracturing in 2011 in order to better understand its impacts on drinking water supplies. A draft report of the study is expected later this year.
Katie Davis, who’s also a volunteer with the water guardians, said Santa Barbara County is looking at a future filled with potentially tens of thousands of new oil wells.
“It’s scary,” Davis said. “We want to head that off.”
She said there’s been an influx of foreign companies investing in oil leases in the county.
The Pacific Coast Business Times reported in February that Goldleaf Jewelry Co., based in Beijing, was going to acquire ERG Resources Inc. for $665 million. ERG is a Texas-based company that operates oil leases in Santa Barbara County, including the Cat Canyon oil field. The Business Times also reported that ERG has re-drilled 227 wells since it took over Cat Canyon in 2010 and has permits in the works for 100 more.
Kevin Drude, deputy director of the Santa Barbara County Planning Department Energy Division, told the Sun that while he’s heard there are big plans for Cat Canyon, ERG representatives haven’t come in to speak to him yet.
At the moment, the only big project in the works at the county planning office is a drilling expansion project planned at Pacific Coast Energy Company, which operates on Orcutt Hill. Drude said the energy company wants to drill 96 new wells that would extract oil using cyclic steam injection, which is the same technique used by Santa Maria Energy.
Steam is injected at high pressure into the wells and pools in the oil reservoir. The heat produced loosens up oil from its deposits in the rock formation. That oil is then brought back up to the surface, where it’s separated from the water and sold as crude.
The county is actively looking for a consultant to file an Environmental Impact Report for the Pacific Coast Energy project, so planning is still in the early stages.
“That’s the only [project] that’s formally in,” Drude said. “We know that there are other operators out there who are interested and watching to see what’s happening with these bigger projects.”
Drude said it’ll be interesting to see what happens if an initiative does make it on the November ballot. Fracking regulations are under the purview of the California Department of Conservation Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources. He said the current legislative push is to allow hydraulic fracturing. In 2013, California lawmakers asked the Department of Conservation to come up with a set of stringent regulations regarding the practice through Senate Bill 4. The department is currently conducting an independent study on the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing, and permanent regulations are being drafted for 2015.
“It just seems to me that the momentum for now is to allow it to happen, with tighter regulations,” Drude said. “It would take a tremendous paradigm shift to change directions.”
If an initiative does pass in the county, Drude said it would most likely need to make its way to the Legislature in Sacramento.
Water guardians’ Davis and Claassen both see an unappetizing future for the county if this initiative doesn’t make its way to the ballot and get passed. It’s a future in which they say water resources are fought over, water sources are in danger of contamination, and the beauty of the county is imperiled.
“There are half a dozen companies looking at ramping up production,” Davis said. “We’ve got a big challenge ahead of us, and we have a short time to do it. Let the people decide.”
She said companies like Santa Maria Energy aren’t going to stop at 136 wells. The Pacific Coast Business Times reported in January that the company disclosed it would be investing $114 million into looking at 7,700 new potential drilling sites in Santa Barbara County. That money comes with a merger with Hyde Park Acquisition Company that would make Santa Maria Energy a publicly traded company, but everything has yet to be finalized. Santa Maria Energy spokesperson Bob Poole said until everything is completed, he’s legally not able to talk about the merger or what it could mean for the company’s future.
But Poole did say that the water guardians’ initiative is just another attempt to stop oil production, and isn’t really about hydraulic fracturing or cyclic steam injection. He added that Senate Bill 4 is a great method to address the concerns surrounding contentious oil extraction practices.
“Good decision making should be based on objective facts and science,” Poole said. “They need to follow the science-based approach the governor and the state of California are taking on this issue, there is a scientific study underway … why don’t they get behind that instead of trying to jump ahead of science?”
This article appears in Mar 20-27, 2014.
