Local Sierra Club and allies defeat Exxon

By Jon Ullman, Sierra Club Los Padres Chapter Director

Sierrans Kate Mullin, Luz Reyes-Martin, Jon Ullman Emily Engel and her children at an Exxon Rally in front of the County Administration Building rallying against its trucking proposal on May 6, 2019. Photo by Gabriel Vargas

On March 8, 2022, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors ended ExxonMobil’s quixotic bid to reactivate three 1980s offshore oil wells and move its oil via trucks.

Exxon’s proposal would have entailed moving the crude onto 24,800 tanker trucks annually, driving the equivalent of a rolling firebomb up CA 101 along the Gaviota Coast past commuters and tourists, across windswept, fire-ridden coastlines, up steep mountain passes, through urban centers, over rivers into aquifers, and nationally protected monuments and forests and up a craggy two-lane Rt. 166 with a 55-mph speed to market.

It took seven years, but local Sierra Club activists, unyielding allies and tested officials defeated one of the largest energy companies in the world. In a split 3-2 vote, Supervisors Joan Hartmann, Gregg Hart and Das Williams commented that the project benefits did not outweigh the risks, while North County Supervisors Steve Lavagnino and Bob Nelson supported the trucking proposal.

But it really took an entire generation of Santa Barbara citizens fighting.

The lease

The problems began on Feb. 6, 1968, when the Johnson Administration awarded 18 wildcat leases off the Gaviota Coast to what would become ExxonMobil. Among the 72 leases given that day, one within a year would produce the largest offshore oil disaster in US history. The 1969 Santa Barbara Spill from Unocal’s Platform A would unleash an environmental movement and a new era of environmental laws. But even that could not stop the drilling.

Four days into the Ford Administration, acting Secretary of the Interior John C. Whitaker gave approval for the first Exxon platform to go in. Despite massive public opposition, Santa Barbara County Supervisors voted 3-2 the following year to approve an onshore oil and gas refinery in Las Flores Canyon near El Capitan.

Install

On June 23, 1976, Platform Hondo, an 11-story skyscraper of steel atop the waterline was bolted to the ocean floor five miles from Refugio Beach, site of the Ortega family ranch and the Chumash village of Quasil. Platform Harmony would rise even taller at 12-stories above water in June 1989. A third 11-story tall drilling platform called Heritage joined four months later. Oil was transported by ship and by truck.

Between 1987 and 1994, 130 miles of pipeline were installed between Las Flores Canyon and the Pentland Delivery Point in Kern County. The pipeline also connected to three other platforms, Hidalgo, Harvest and Hermosa owned by a different oil company in federal waters farther north.

Rupture

Then, on May 19, 2015, at 11:30 a.m. a Plains All-American Pipeline control room operator in Midland, TX, shut down the line a half-hour after reports from citizens who notified the operators. It was not equipped with an automatic shutdown due to the federal government overriding Santa Barbara County’s insistence for such a simple and obvious safety measure.

The Refugio disaster sent about 450,000 gallons of oil onto the coastline and into Santa Barbara Channel resulting in at least 202 dead birds and 99 dead mammals, including at least 46 sea lions and 12 dolphins. Beaches and sea life were covered in crude costing hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up.

Exxon’s “Emergency”

Six days after the pipeline burst, while crews were still cleaning up oil amid the crude covering birds and sea lions, Exxon submitted an “emergency request” to the County to restart drilling with eight tanker trucks an hour on CA 101— 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — each carrying 6,720 gallons.

Hundreds of residents emailed comments against Exxon’s request and hundreds more protested and marched in the days before a single decision would be made by Director of Planning Glenn Russell. Exxon’s plan was denied four days later, not by Russell, but by Assistant Planning Director Dianne Black. Russell recused himself because he had owned Exxon stock, which he said he had divested himself of a few months earlier.

The 7-year pitch

Despite the denial, Exxon continued to pursue the truck option and Plains Pipeline, which would eventually be criminally sentenced and ordered to pay $60 million dollars in restitutions and fines, pursued a new 130-mile pipeline. You can follow that trial here:www.plainsoilspill.com The government’s investigation into the pipeline failure is here: https://tinyurl.com/PlainsPipelineFailure

Exxon filed paid consultant reports, staff held scoping meetings and the planning commission held multiple hearings over several years. Opponents submitted tens of thousands of public comments, held marches and rallies attended by thousands and fought every step of the way even during the pandemic.

Sierra Club Los Padres Chapter Chair Katie Davis carries a reminder of Plains Pipeline's criminal past at its new pipeline open-house Jan 31, 2019

Many Davids vs. Goliath

The Sierra Club Los Padres Chapter played a leading role in the fight led by Santa Barbara and Arguello Group activists. We received help from neighboring chapters in San Luis Obispo and Kern Counties and backing from the National Sierra Club’s CA Dirty Fuels campaign based in Los Angeles.
We worked in concert with a broad coalition of allies (full list at end of article.) Each group had talents and specialties, but when we came together it was like harmony.

Group logos

The Exxon offshore trucking plan occurred along with the Cat Canyon onshore expansion, involving another Exxon-owned company, Aera Energy. Juggling two major oil fights might have stressed one’s limits, but Sierra Club activists and our allies only fought harder. In the end, thanks to our unrelenting opposition, Cat Canyon never went to a vote and all three applicants withdrew.

Now it was just Exxon.

After a long string of meetings by the Planning Commission in 2021, it voted 3-2 to recommend denial.

Tiger Beat

On March 8, 2022, Exxon lawyers and lobbyists and business allies sat in the first few rows of the Board of Supervisors hearing room in Santa Maria.. They had brought out 200 workers to the final vote filling the hearing room, the lobby and extending out the doors. TV from Los Angeles covered the story. Most of the people opposed to Exxon trucking testified via zoom not wanting to attend the maskless event.

Their testimony, given in one-minute allotments over several hours, overwhelmingly outnumbered those in favor.

Supervisors Hartmann, Williams and Hart voted to deny. The two oil supporting Supervisors representing the oil-friendly North County -- Lavagnino and Nelson -- were outnumbered.

Seven years after Assistant Planning Director Diane Black said no to Exxon’s emergency request, the county had again closed the door on trucking.
Meanwhile, the class action suit against Plains for the Refugio spill was set for a court jury trial June 2.

This story apparently has not ended. We also hear that the Plains Pipeline system is now undertaking draft environmental studies that we hear may come to the public after October. But timelines usually stretch while rust steadily accelerates. It would take a long time before a pipeline could be reopened, which I doubt will ever come to pass. The problem is what it’s connected to, three rusting platforms, the first of which was installed in 1976.

That was the year Happy Days probably should have ended. The next year Fonzi jump the shark. Exxon’s jumped the shark, now it’s just time to end.

Extra info:

Government report: https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/sites/phmsa.dot.gov/files/docs/PHMSA_Failure_Investigation_Report_Plains_Pipeline_LP_Line_901_Public.pdf

Exxon asks for trucks: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-oil-trucks-rejected-20150609-story.html

Short video giving specifics about the dangers of transporting oil by truck (Directed by @offline.media.account and @nicholas_weissman) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MFdmLWW-8w&t=7s

Coalition against Exxon Trucks

It took more than a village, lots of them. Thank you all for this watershed decision that took years of effort. The coalition opposing ExxonMobil’s trucking plan included:

350 SB, California Coastal Protection Network, California Wildlife Foundation/California Oaks, CalTrout, Carpinteria Valley Association, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Oceanic Awareness Research, and Education (COARE), Channel Islands Restoration, Citizens Planning Association, Climate First: Replacing Oil and Gas (CFROG), Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, Coastal Ranches Conservancy, Community Environmental Council, Cuyama Valley Community Association, Eco Vista, Environmental Center of San Luis Obispo, Environmental Defense Center, Explore Ecology, Food & Water Watch, Food and Water Action, Fund for SB, Gaviota Coast Conservancy, Get Oil Out!, Goleta Goodland Coalition, Heal the Bay, Heal the Ocean, League of Women Voters (SB), Los Padres ForestWatch, Northern California Recycling Association, Plastic Pollution Coalition, Plastics Ocean International, SB Audubon, SB Channelkeeper, SB County Action Network, SB Standing Rock Coalition, SB Urban Creeks Council, Save Our Shores, the SB Museum of Natural History & Sea Center, Seventh Generation Advisors, Sierra Club Los Padres Chapter, Sierra Club Santa Lucia Chapter, Society of Fearless Grandmothers (SB), Surfrider Foundation, Surfrider Foundation SB County Chapter, The 5 Gyres Institute, UCSB Associated Students External Vice President for Statewide Affairs Esmeralda Quintero-Cubillan, UCSB Coastal Fund, UCSB Environmental Affairs Board, UCSB Environmental Justice Alliance, UPSTREAM, WE Watch, Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation, and Zero Waste USA.