The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to deny ExxonMobil’s proposal to restart its offshore oil platforms and temporarily truck the oil to refineries.
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 Supervisors Steve Lavagnino and Bob Nelson supported the trucking proposal.
ExxonMobil requested a permit for a phased restart it its Santa Ynez Unit — offshore oil platforms of Hondo, Harmony and Heritage — by trucking produced crude oil from the Las Flores Canyon facility in southern Santa Barbara County.
The company proposed building truck loading racks at Las Flores Canyon and transporting oil either to the Santa Maria Pump Station for delivery to the Phillips 66 Santa Maria Refinery in southern San Luis Obispo County or the Pentland Terminal in Kern County.
The Phillips 66 refinery plans to close in 2023, so ExxonMobil’s revised proposal states that oil would be trucked to the Santa Maria Pump Station only until the refinery stops operating.
Trucking would be restricted during rainy periods because spills during rain events could be transported into waterways more readily than during dry periods, county staff members said.
ExxonMobil has a vested right to operate the Santa Ynez Unit, company attorney Sherry Scott said, and without a pipeline available, the company requests a permit to temporarily truck the product for seven years, or whenever a pipeline becomes available.
ExxonMobil, FreePort-McMoRan and the now-defunct Venoco Inc. shut down their offshore oil platforms shortly after the May 19, 2015, Refugio oil spill, which was caused by a rupture in the Plains All American transportation pipeline that transports oil from the platforms to refineries in neighboring counties.
Plains All American Pipeline is proposing replacement pipelines to be constructed through the county, and that project is still in the environmental review process.
In November, the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission formally rejected the proposal to temporarily truck oil from the Gaviota Coast to the Santa Maria Valley and Kern County. It was a 3-2 vote, and the issue went to the Board of Supervisors.
At Tuesday’s hearing, there were about 100 speakers during public comment, including dozens of people who supported the permit and dozens of people who spoke against it. So many people signed up to speak that the Board of Supervisors limited public comment to one minute per person, and even then, there was more than an hour of comment Tuesday.
Supporters said the project would return high-paying jobs to the area and bring millions of dollars in tax revenues to the county.
“The partial restart will bring back nearly 250 employees to our facilities, create construction jobs and require truck drivers,” said Bryan Anderson, the asset manager of ExxonMobil’s Santa Ynez Unit.
Opponents said the county cannot make a statement of overriding considerations — the benefits of the project do not outweigh the unavoidable adverse environmental impact.
Environmental concerns focused on trucking’s traffic impacts, greenhouse gas emissions and the potential for spills during transportation to refineries. Once the Santa Maria Pump Station closes, all of the ExxonMobil truck trips would have to travel from the Gaviota Coast to Kern County along Highway 101 and Highway 166.
ExxonMobil first proposed trucking oil a few weeks after the 2015 oil spill, and that permit was denied by the county. The company kept producing oil and filled Las Flores Canyon’s storage tanks after the spill, and then received an emergency permit to truck that stored oil — about 425,000 barrels — to refineries in early 2016.
All of that oil was transported without any incidents, according to Santa Barbara County planning staff.
The supervisors’ findings in the permit denial included language that said the economic benefits of the project (local jobs, tax revenues and local spending) “may not be as secure or as high quality as indicated by the applicant, and they do not outweigh the unavoidable adverse environmental impacts of the project.”
An earlier version of the project mitigated greenhouse gas emissions to a greater extent, the supervisor majority concluded, and the project ultimately would produce more long-distance truck trips since all of them would have to travel to Kern County after the Phillips 66 Santa Maria Refinery closes next year.
Potential economic benefits of the project are “substantially less than those of the county’s coastal hospitality industry, which is significantly threatened by the possibility of oil spills,” according to the findings.
— Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
