The future is unclear for Venoco Inc.’s Goleta oil-production facility after two separate votes, taken just a day apart, from state and local jurisdictions that are at odds with one another.
On Wednesday, the California State Lands Commission voted unanimously to re-certify environmental documents and allow Venoco to resume oil production from a pier at Haskell’s Beach near the Bacara Resort & Spa.
Wednesday’s decision came just a day after the Goleta City Council voted to adopt an ordinance that could force oil company Venoco’s Ellwood Onshore Facility, the processing plant for offshore oil and gas, to be shut down.
The company has two piers, known as PRC Lease 421-1 and 421-2, located on the beach just below Sandpiper Golf Course in western Goleta.
The company is applying to resume operations at the second pier, which has not produced oil since 1994, when an onshore oil spill occurred, releasing oil from a 6-inch flow line beneath the 12th tee of the golf course.
“There is no new drilling … It is the existing well,” said Seth Blackmon, staff attorney with the California State Lands Commission, adding that there also wouldn’t be any hydraulic fracturing (fracking) or acidization taking place.
The project would process an average of 150 barrels a day from the second pier and pipe them into the Ellwood Onshore Facility.
That facility is in a bit of limbo, however, thanks to a 3-2 vote taken Tuesday night that all but assured the City of Goleta would work to shut down the facility, over which it has jurisdiction.
The facility does not conform with the zoning designation of the land it sits on, which is specified as recreational.
The property was designated that way by the county in 1991, and was kept as recreational when the City of Goleta was formed in 2002, with its boundaries enveloping the facility.
Blackmon said the final environmental impact report had been revised, and “it really does address some of the final issues,” he said.
One issue that had been modified was a separate discussion of the pressure at the Vaqueros Reservoir, which is the source of oil for the pier lease and “represents a safety risk to the region in general,” he said.
Blackmon said increasing pressure of the formation was documented from 1987 to 2000, but no data is available after 2000, because the oil reservoir has not produced oil since that time.
In 2000, a methane leak was identified, and significant oil pressure was building up in the Vaqueros Reservoir, Blackmon said.
Whether that reservoir and those nearby could fully withstand pressure if it was reactivated “we don’t know,” he said, adding that resuming production would be the only way to gather data.
Blackmon showed photos of the piers and caissons at Haskell’s Beach, on which significant work has been done,
“A lot of work has been done by Venoco to create a safe operating environment, at least as far as the piers are concerned,” he said.
The Ellwood Onshore Facility permit allows for 13,000 barrels of oil per day, and the facility is processing much less than that now, he said.
Another alternative to using the facility to process the oil would be to pipe it into Exxon Mobil’s Las Flores Canyon Facility, but that would require 10 miles of pipeline to be constructed and additional equipment would be required on the pier.
“This creates some significant impacts,” Blackmon said, adding that whether to allow the Ellwood facility to process oil from the pier is “up to the City of Goleta.”
Platform Holly, which is also operated by Venoco, also uses the Ellwood facility to process oil and gas.
The platform is expected to be operating until 2055, Blackmon said, and if the Ellwood facility is shut down, the company has an obligation to continue processing oil from the platform or the piers.
Chris Peltonen, development manager for Venoco, briefly spoke Wednesday, saying there were differences between the company and the city, and Chris Collier of the Coastal Energy Alliance said “there was definitely a split vote and a lively discussion” at Goleta’s council meeting on Tuesday.
Jennifer Carmine, an attorney representing Goleta, said “the city is gravely concerned” about the risks to the beach and recreational areas from processing oil in the area.
“The EOF is a very old facility and has been a legal non-conforming use since 1991,” she said, adding that it has never processed gas from the second pier, as the project proposes.
Goleta Mayor Paula Perotte said that approving the project was a “step backwards.”
“Venoco has chosen to maintain this non-conforming facility while the community is growing around it,” she said.
Perrotte asserted that the company has allowed its infrastructure to crumble and that the EIR was riddled with errors.
Other opponents of the project, including Jenna Driscoll of Santa Barbara Channelkeeper and Linda Krop of the Environmental Defense Center, also spoke out against re-certifying the EIR.
“The city has made clear that the city is interested in ending operations at the EOF,” Driscoll said.
Lands Commission Chairman Alan Gordon said that the panel’s job on Wednesday was to talk about the project at hand, not about the wisdom of processing oil on the California Coast.
“Those decisions were made a long time ago,” he said.
He said he’d be supporting the project, and added that processing the oil elsewhere would require an additional pipeline, that would likely run over several sensitive watersheds, which is “not a way to go.”
If the city chooses to cancel the permit at the Ellwood facility, “that will be between the city and Venoco at some future date,” he said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
