Santa Barbara County may be moving toward a future without onshore oil and gas production.
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will meet on Tuesday to discuss a proposed ordinance to ban new oil and gas production and phase out existing facilities.
In response to the board’s direction in May, county staff recommend a two-phase approach that would ban new onshore oil wells as part of the first phase.
“Staff estimates that the prohibition on new drilling could be adopted within approximately six months,” a county staff report states.
The second phase of the ordinance would target existing oil and gas facilities for closure, including operating and idle wells, and that could take years to implement, according to the staff report.
Phasing out existing operators could take longer to allow operators of the site to recoup their losses through a process called amortization. County staff are proposing that the phaseout should begin after an amortization study is conducted.
If the Board of Supervisors approves the proposed ordinance, well operators and the state of California would be responsible for plugging and abandoning the wells.
The move to ban oil and gas production in Santa Barbara County was discussed after a study by the UC Santa Barbara Political Science Department that claimed phasing out oil and gas operations could save the county between $54 to $81 million in mortality costs by 2045.
The report stated that additional cost savings would come from avoiding oil spills, oil-related incidents, and reduced impacts from climate change. Additionally, the study said the county could prevent 344,072 metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2045, which could prevent climate-related damages estimated to cost $21.8 million.
The move to ban oil and gas comes as a response to the passage of AB 3233, which granted local governments more power to ban the operations in their jurisdictions.
For the ordinance to pass, the Board of Supervisors will need a simple majority vote of three of the five members.
Supervisors Laura Capps, Joan Hartmann and Roy Lee voted in favor of the phaseout during the April meeting.
Supervisor Steve Lavagnino was absent for the meeting and Supervisor Bob Nelson voted against the ordinance. He called the move an “absolute disappointment” and said he is concerned about the loss of jobs that are tied to oil and gas production in his North County district.
Peter Rupert, the director of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project, said that losing the oil and gas production could affect 1,800 local jobs in various industries, including about 100 people working directly in drilling.
He said in May that despite signs that the oil production is trending downward, the industry still produces an output of three-quarters of a billion dollars.
The Board of Supervisors meets in Santa Barbara at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. The meeting will be held at the County Administration Building Board Hearing Room at 105 E. Anapamu St. Members of the public can attend and comment in person or remotely via Zoom. View the meeting calendar and agenda here.
