The lubricators

Talk about power of the press! No sooner had your Ruthness penned a column on the world’s dwindling oil resources last week than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature, under the cover of their annual budget balancing act, opened up the coast of California to new offshore drilling for the first time in 40 years. At issue is the Tranquillon Ridge project, off the coast near Santa Barbara. That of course is the site of the infamous 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, when one of Union Oil’s rigs suffered a blowout that dumped as many as 100,000 barrels of crude oil on previously pristine beaches. Auntie visited Santa Barbara in the mid-1990s, and when you walked on the beach, little black balls of tar still squeezed up between your toes.

Aptly enough, the ugliest spill in state history led to a de facto moratorium on all new offshore drilling development and the eventual passage of the California Coastal Sanctuary Act of 1994, which made it official. However, last year, Plains Exploration & Production Company, which operates platforms in federal waters off Santa Barbara, made an offer even many local environmentalists couldn’t refuse: In exchange for permitting the company to tap oil in state waters via so-called slant drilling from an existing rig in federal waters, PXP offered to give up nearly 4,000 acres of protected coastline and permanently shut down all production in 2022. The plan was quashed by the California State Lands Commission in January, but Gov. Greenhouse revived it in May, inserting it in his own budget proposal, then leveraging Democrats with $100 million in oil royalties this year and an estimated $1.8 billion in revenue before the ridge is pumped dry.

Auntie would be quite the hypocrite to oppose the plan with jerked knee. After all, just last week she was caterwauling about the world’s dwindling petroleum resources and how we’re all doomed. The truth is, someday, we will be drilling off the coast of California; we won’t have a choice. But that day doesn’t have to be today, especially considering the underhanded way the affair has been conducted. The folks in Santa Barbara apparently support drilling. Big oil made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. The problem is, California’s coast belongs to all of us, and we weren’t let in on the deal. Fortunately, the state Assembly recognized that fact last Friday and threw the proposal out of the budget. Don’t worry. It’ll be back.