SANTA BARBARA — In a victory for community and conservation groups, the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission on September 29 voted to deny ExxonMobil’s proposal to transport oil by tanker trucks along a hazardous California highway so it can restart three drilling platforms off the Santa Barbara Coast that have been shut down since the Refugio Oil Spill of 2015.
“The 3-2 initial vote came unexpectedly Wednesday, during the first of two days of scheduled public hearings on the project, and is expected to be followed Nov. 3 with a formal vote and findings recommending the Board of Supervisors deny the project,” according to a press release from a coalition of groups.
“ExxonMobil’s plan calls for up to 24,800 oil-filled truck trips per year on coastal Highway 101 and hazardous Route 166, 24 hours a day, to refineries for up to seven years or whenever a new coastal oil pipeline is completed, whichever is shorter,” the groups stated.
ExxonMobil’s three offshore platforms near Santa Barbara were shut down in 2015 after the Plains All American Pipeline ruptured and spilled thousands of gallons of crude oil along the California coast, a story that that I covered in depth at the time. Since then, I have covered the aftermath of the oil spill, including the clean up, the filling of charges against Plains All American, the trial, the judge’s decision and sentencing and most recently, the proposal by Exxon Mobil to restart its platforms and transport crude oil by tanker truck, as well as the deeper story of Big Oil regulatory capture in California that facilitated the spill.
The coalition opposing ExxonMobil’s trucking plan includes Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation, 350 Santa Barbara, the Center for Biological Diversity, Climate First: Replacing Oil and Gas (CFROG), Environmental Defense Center, Food and Water Action, GOO!, SBCAN, Sierra Club’s Los Padres Chapter, UCSB Associated Students External Vice President for Statewide Affairs Esmeralda Quintero-Cubillan, UCSB Environmental Affairs Board (EAB), Surfrider Foundation Santa Barbara County Chapter, Los Padres ForestWatch, the Goleta Goodland Coalition, the Cuyama Valley Community Association and the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation.
“Our community spoke loud and clear against this project, and the commission did the right thing in recommending denial of ExxonMobil’s application to restart its offshore platforms and truck its oil along dangerous and scenic county highways,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Environmental Defense Center, which represents Get Oil Out! and Santa Barbara County Action Network. “The risk to our climate, the Santa Barbara Channel, and the safety of our communities justifies denial. We look forward to working with the county as we transition to a clean energy future.”
The revised final supplemental environment impact report considered by the commission concludes there would be “significant, unavoidable impacts from the project”, including significant impacts on wildlife and cultural resources in the event of an oil spill from a tanker truck, according to the groups. The document fails to analyze the numerous harmful impacts of bringing Exxon’s offshore platforms back online. The Planning Commission’s recommended denial of the project will go to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors for a final county decision.
“The Environmental Affairs Board is thrilled the Planning Commission made the correct decision to recommend denial of Exxon’s trucking proposal,” said the Environmental Affairs Board at University of California at Santa Barbara. “Exxon’s proposal ignored the unavoidable risks of spills, crashes, fires, and the destruction of habitat. It would further delay our local transition to a clean, safe, and just future. Climate change is a looming crisis for our generation of students, and victories like this give us hope for the future.”
The coalition pointed out that California suffers hundreds of oil-truck incidents a year, and many result in oil spills. There were 258 trucking accidents along the route from 2015 to 2021, California Highway Patrol data show, resulting in 10 deaths and 110 injuries. A tanker truck crashed off Highway 166 in March 2020, spilling more than 4,500 gallons of oil into the Cuyama River above Twitchell Reservoir.
“To hear the commissioners prioritize public safety and environmental protection over ExxonMobil’s unnecessary and dangerous oil trucking proposal was heartening,” said Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It really feels like Santa Barbara County is poised to be a national leader in the clean energy transition.”
A majority of Santa Barbara County voters have said they oppose proposals to restart ExxonMobil’s offshore drilling platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel, according to a November 2019 poll. Nearly 3 out of 4 respondents said they were concerned “about the safety of our local highways if up to 70 oil tanker trucks are allowed on our roads each day.”
“Restarting these 40-year-old platforms, beyond their max 35-year life, with a history of corrosion and spills, puts our entire coastline at risk,” said Katie Davis, chair of the Sierra Club Los Padres Chapter, which also submitted a petition, signed by more than 2,000 people, opposing the project. “Offshore oil is so risky even Republican states like Florida have fought off offshore oil development. It’s why 7,500 businesses and 90 cities on the Pacific coast are on recordopposing offshore oil.”
ExxonMobil’s oil-trucking scheme is strongly opposed by a coalition of 35 community and conservation organizations, who recently sent the commission a letter urging it to reject the project. They cited the project’s threat of more offshore oil spills, fueling climate change, and endangering motorists and communities with dangerous oil tanker truck crashes.
“Now is not the time to turn the clock back and return to our old ways of relying on fossil fuels to meet our energy needs,” the letter concludes. “The County of Santa Barbara is moving towards a clean energy future by adopting renewable energy targets and joining the Central Coast Community Energy program. Allowing ExxonMobil to resume oil production off our coast will lead to decades of fossil fuel production that we cannot afford.”
“ExxonMobil’s plans to restart its offshore platforms and onshore processing facility will also generate enormous levels of greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to climate change, undermining state and national climate targets and goals set by the county’s Energy and Climate Action Plan adopted in May 2015,” according to the coalition.
Big Oil lobbyist led task force to create ‘marine protected areas’ impacted by the spill
Missing from the news coverage of the oil spill, the trial and sentencing and now the proposal by the oil industry to restart three offshore platforms and transport the oil by tanker trucks is one of the biggest and most ironic stories regarding the Refugio Oil Spill.
In a classic example of the deep regulatory capture that pervades what passes for “marine protection” in California, the head of the oil industry trade association that lobbies for the Plains All American Pipeline corporation happens to be the very same “marine guardian” who chaired the panel that created the so-called “marine protected areas” that were fouled by the spill.
“Plains All American, the owner of the pipeline, is a member of the Western States Petroleum Association,” proclaimed Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), in her statement responding to the spill in May 2015.
In an apparent conflict of interest, Reheis-Boyd served as the chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called marine “protected areas” (MPAs) in Southern California.
Four “marine protected areas” created under Reheis-Boyd — the Goleta Slough, Campus Point, Naples and Kashtayit State Marine Conservation Areas — were imperiled by the oil spill that started at Refugio State Beach.
She also served on the task forces for the Central Coast, North Central Coast, and North Coast from 2004 to 2012, as well as on a federal marine protected areas panel from 2003 to 2014. She served on these panels as the oil industry was fracking off the Southern California Coast.
Yet not one government official, NGO representative or reporter (except this one) mentioned that the head oil industry lobbyist promoting the expansion of offshore drilling and opposing legislation increasing protection of the California coast was the same state official who headed the panel to create questionable Southern California “marine protected areas” that don’t protect the ocean from fracking, offshore drilling, pollution, seismic testing and human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering.
Background: Big Oil exerts enormous influence over California regulators
Big Oil is the biggest and most powerful corporate lobby in Sacramento — and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) is the biggest and most powerful lobbying organization. Big Oil, along with corporate agribusiness, developers, big water agencies, timber companies, and other Big Money interests, has captured the regulatory apparatus in California.
Just four oil industry lobbyist employers alone — the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), Chevron, Aera Energy and California Resources Corporation — spent $10,192,047 lobbying the Governor’s Office, Legislature and regulatory agencies to advance Big Oil’s agenda in 2020, according to data posted on the California Secretary of State’s website by February 1, 2021.
The Western States Petroleum Association, the largest and most powerful corporate lobbying organization in California, spent a total of $4,267,181, less than half of the $8.8 million that it spent in 2019. 2020’s lobbying expenses included $1,084,702 in the fifth quarter, $1,220,986 in the sixth quarter, $1,116,397 in the seventh quarter and $845,096 in the eighth quarter.
The San Ramon-based Chevron, a beneficiary of many new fracking permits this year, spent $4,091,501 in California 2020, less than the $5.9 million in spent in 2019. Chevron spent $1,644,943 in the fifth quarter, $1,009, 322 in the sixth quarter, $752,437 in the seventh quarter and $684,799 in the eighth quarter.
Another big spender and beneficiary of large numbers of new fracking permits this year, Aera Energy, spent a total of $795,099 on lobbying California officials in 2020. Aera pumped $290,926 into lobbying California officials in the fifth quarter, $191,660 in the sixth quarter, $200,082 in the seventh quarter and $112,431 in the eighth quarter of the year.
Aera Energy has close ties with the Governor’s Office. In November, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on how Governor Gavin Newsom didn’t follow his own COVID pandemic guidelines when he attended a birthday party for Jason Kinney, a close friend and advisor, at the French Laundry Restaurant in Napa. Kinney is a lobbyist for Axiom Advisors, who lobbies for Aera Energy and other energy corporations.
Jointly owned by Shell and ExxonMobil, Aera produces nearly nearly a quarter of California’s oil and gas production. Aera paid Axiom Advisors $200,000 during 2019 and 2020 for lobbying on oil and gas permitting issues and other matters, according to Donny Shaw and Eric Seidman in Sludge: Newsom Delivers for Energy Clients of Lobbyist He Celebrated at French Laundry https://readsludge.com/2021/01/12/newsom-delivers-for-energy-clients-of-lobbyist-he-celebrated-at-french-laundry/
“As journalist Steve Horn reported for Capital & Main last June, Aera received the first new batch of fracking permits from the Newsom administration after a months-long moratorium. Newsom had placed a temporary ban on new fracking permits in California in November 2019 following a series of scandals at the state’s oil well regulatory agency, the state’s conservation agency’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources, or DOGGR (now Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM),” Shaw and Seidman wrote.
Finally, the California Resources Corporation, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, spent $1,038,266 to influence state officials in 2020. The corporation spent $310,198 on lobbying in the fifth quarter, $344,960 in the sixth quarter, $146,543 in the seventh quarter and $236,565 in the eight quarter.
The oil companies were amply rewarded for the over $10 million that they spent on lobbying last year. In a year of record fires and an unprecedented pandemic, California oil regulators more than doubled the approval of permits in 2020 to drill new oil and gas production wells.
The California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) of the Department of Conservation, the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency, approved more than 1,700 new oil and gas production well permits in 2020, Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker Alliance reported.
“Largely because of a moratorium on high pressure cyclic steaming—a dangerous technique burning carbon-emitting natural gas to make steam used to coax stubborn oil out of the ground-- permits for all types of drilling dropped 14%. Very few drilling permits were used to drill new wells -- only 60 new wells were drilled in 2020,” the groups noted.
Lobbying is just one of the seven methods that Big Oil uses in California to exercise inordinate influence over California regulators. WSPA and Big Oil wield their power in 7 major ways: through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) serving on and putting shills on regulatory panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups; (5) working in collaboration with media; (6) creating alliances with labor unions; and (7) contributing to non profit organizations.
The inordinate influence by Big Oil on California politicians and regulators has resulted in widespread air, ground and water pollution with huge health impacts on mostly Black and Brown communities living near oil and gas wells.
Between 2008 and 2018 alone, oil and gas companies created a statewide total of over 1.3 trillion gallons of oil and gas wastewater in California, enough liquid to fill over 17.6 million household bathtubs, according to a report released by Earthworks, along with allies VISION California and Center for Biological Diversity.
The report reveals that California, often portrayed by the state’s politicians and national media as the nation’s “green” and “progressive” leader, is actually one of the worst states in the U.S. when it comes to regulating the oil and gas industry’s waste.
The regulatory failures range from allowing crops to be irrigated with potentially toxic and radioactive wastewater to storing waste in unlined pits or injecting it into protected groundwater aquifers, according to Earthworks.