By Katie Davis, Chapter Chair
Earth Day Teach-in
Earth Day started as a teach-in. We are continuing that tradition by hosting a panel discussion on Earth Day this year April 27th at 1:00 pm during the Santa Barbara Community Environmental Council celebration at Alameda Park. Look for us on the Climate Action Stage.
Our theme: Santa Barbara’s Big Oil Resistance. You will learn about Santa Barbara’s decades long fight against oil expansion both on and offshore, the spills and climate impacts that have shaped the fight, inspiring wins against some of the largest oil companies in the world, and the next phase in this frontline fight to protect our health, environment and our world.
License to Spill
An oil startup has applied to Santa Barbara County for transfer of ownership from Exxon to themselves in hopes of restarting offshore oil production shut down since a massive oil spill in 2015.
They are requesting the County approve their taking over the gas and oil pipelines, including the one that burst and caused the 2015 Refugio oil spill, and the Santa Ynez oil processing facility on the Gaviota coast, which when operating was the largest facility source of greenhouse gas and health-damaging air pollution in the County.
The oil startup, called Sable, is financed by a loan from Exxon and speculative funding through a blank check company. The Santa Barbara County Planning Commission will consider the request sometime this summer. County decision makers should be highly skeptical of Exxon offloading liability for its aging oil operation to a startup company that would disappear in the event of a spill or other disaster.
Check out Sable’s website: https://sableoffshore.com/
Health on the Ballot
Big Oil is drilling dangerously close to the homes of two million people in California—and putting them at higher risk of asthma, birth defects and cancer. That’s why in 2022 California banned oil drilling next to homes, schools and businesses in recognition that everyone deserves clean air and healthy neighborhoods.
But the oil industry is set on trying to overturn even these modest health and safety buffers, paying to get enough signatures to hold up implementation of the law and put it on the November 2024 ballot. Learn more about the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California uniting to protect neighborhoods from dangerous oil wells: https://www.cavsbigoil.com/
Fracking is Not the Problem
A few years ago California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a halt to new permits for well-stimulation treatments such as fracking, saying that the state “needs to move beyond oil.” A formal plan to ban fracking statewide was recently released by the Department of Conservation’s Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) with the goal to “prevent damage to life, health, property, and natural resources,” as well as mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
That sounds great, but the problem is the definition of well-stimulation treatments they are using does not include steam injection methods—which is the kind of unconventional oil production most used in California. There is no fracking in Santa Barbara County and very little in Ventura County, but 100 percent of the proposed oil projects in SB County over the last decade have been steam projects.
Cyclic steam and steam flooding are forms of well stimulation that super-heat oil out of the ground. They have the same kinds of risks and impacts as fracking, but they are more energy-intensive with higher emissions.
These methods were included in a 2021 bill introduced by state senators Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), which would have halted permits for fracking, acid well treatments, cyclic steaming, and water and steam flooding starting in 2022, and then prohibited those extraction methods entirely in 2027.
But thanks to the oil lobby, that bill was shot down.
It is easy to ban fracking when it is hardly used in California at all. Really grappling with oil pollution will require phasing out steam production as well.
Methane Risks
Fracking IS used to produce natural gas (methane) in Texas and New Mexico, and that gas is then transported via pipelines to California for use in buildings and power plants. We import 90% of the methane gas we use from other states. Along the way, compressor stations push the gas along to underground storage areas such as the La Goleta gas storage facility underneath Goleta beach and parts of UCSB.
Methane leaks are a problem at every stage. The Ventura Compressor station next to E.P. Foster Elementary School has had several leaks documented by the Air Pollution Control District going back decades, putting residents and school children at risk of inhaling dangerous chemicals like methane, benzene and other volatile organic compounds harmful to health.
The most notorious gas leak in California history occurred less than a decade ago at SoCalGas’s Aliso Canyon storage facility in the San Fernando Valley. The leak was one of the most severe in American history, lasting for months and sickening nearby residents.
Recognizing these risks, the Westside Clean Air Coalition, made up of Ventura community members and environmental organizations, has been fighting a proposal by SoCalGas to expand the Ventura compressor station to send more gas to the La Goleta storage facility. The project would cost more than $500 million – which will largely come from increased rates for consumers in Santa Barbara, Ventura and elsewhere.
Instead of expanding fossil fuel infrastructure, the California Public Utility Commission should require SoCalGas to build a much smaller compressor away from the school and residents, and we should instead invest in electrifying buildings and switching to renewable sources of energy to reduce the need for methane gas locally.