Publisher’s Notebook

Malibuites Urged to Join Effort to Prohibit New Offshore Drilling

BY ANNE SOBLE

An oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara jump-started the environmental movement as we know it over 41 years ago, resulting, among other things, in the offshore oil drilling moratorium in California that is now under siege. It has taken the Gulf Coast Deepwater Horizon tragedy to bring people back to their senses and the realization that oil drilling will never be as safe as its so-called experts say it is. There will always be another part that “wasn’t supposed to fail,” leading to another event that “wasn’t supposed to occur.” Somehow, the “impossibles” become possible, claiming lives and befouling the ocean and the coastline. This arrogance helps to explain why even Brazil and Norway have more drilling safeguards than we do.

When Malibuites first joined the chorus against Tranquillon Ridge, the PXP proposal for off the coast of Santa Barbara, the oil experts assured everyone that the benefits of allowing the first new leases for oil drilling from platforms since the moratorium was enacted 40 years ago outweighed the risks. Concerns about well disasters were dismissed as elitist view protection. When PXP was nixed by State Lands, the governor picked up the drumbeat. But as fears grow that the Gulf crisis could dwarf even the Exxon Valdez spill from which the environment still has not recovered, Governor Schwarzenegger has announced that he now opposes the project.

Ironically, proponents of the PXP plan say Deepwater Horizon is another reason why the new drilling is needed. It would appear that the financial benefits that could accrue to these proponents cancel out the loss of lives, natural resources, income and quality of life that accompanies these disasters. They and many of the other drilling advocates will likely maintain a low profile for a while in the hope that the short public attention span will move onto the next “crisis” and the industry can get back to business as usual. Swift political action is mandatory. Permanent protections against new offshore drilling must take shape quickly. Californians must urge the President and Congress to end the possibility of new offshore contracts now. 

The Gulf Coast oil spill threatens 40 percent of the country’s wetlands and could cost fishing and recreation industries billions of dollars. What further proof is needed that expert assurances of safety are only good until the next disaster? The impact of this latest well failure on marine life may not be fully understood for years. One species—the endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle—could be decimated during its peak migration to nesting beaches. Scientists and conservationists have spent decades trying to bring about this small turtle’s recovery. No one knows whether the Kemp and four other species of endangered and threatened sea turtles will survive the current crisis.

It’s likely that this doesn’t mean much to BP, Transocean or Halliburton, all of whom are probably more concerned with trying to figure out how to get the American taxpayer to pick up the tab for the Gulf mess. Besides, isn’t it all too evident how indifferent oil companies are to turtles, whales and dolphins; fishers and beachgoers; and anything else that gets in the way of the bottom line?