Carp Appeals Venoco’s Plans for Vote on Oil Proposal

Let Venoco drill. We have the oil resources so let's develop them. That's just a duh.

Total insanity. With the budget already stretched, spending more taxpayer money to prevent taxpayers from voting on an issue is just complete nonsense.

I've noticed an interesting pattern over the last month or so. Every time an article about Venoco's Paredon project is posted on a local news site that allows public comments, the article qickly attracts several pro-Paredon comments very much like the ones posted above. Yet when discussions about Paredon take place in the community in real life, pro-Paredon sentiment is much less prevalent.

I don't necessarily find it odd that people would post pro-Paredon comments; there clearly are a range of valid viewpoints on this issue, including those held by Venoco's own employees and contractors, and those people deserve to have their say, just like anyone else. It's that those comments appear so quickly, and are so consistent in their language and the position being argued, despite coming from what at least at first glance appear to be a wide range of user accounts, that seems noteworthy to me.

I've seen the suspicion expressed that these comments actually are part of an "astroturf" campaign being conducted under the direction of the outside public relations firm Venoco has hired. I don't want to give in to conspiracy theories, but there certainly does seem to be a zeal and consistency to these pro-Paredon comments that I haven't seen in other community forums. Maybe that's because in real-world discussions (as opposed to online ones), it is more obvious when the speaker is actually someone who works for, or is paid as a contractor by, the project's proponent?

In the materials I've seen describing the "Carpinteria Community Initiative", Venoco has gone to great lengths to characterize its initiative as representing a broadly held sentiment in the community, rather than being something implemented by and designed to benefit a single company. Even Venoco's preferred name for the initiative appears to have been chosen to support that characterization. I'm beginning to wonder if the pattern of pro-Paredon user comments on news sites is part of the same strategy.

I encourage those reading these comments to consider the possibility that many of the voices purporting to reflect citizen support for Paredon may in fact represent a single voice: Venoco's.

Well said, JBC. The rapidity of the responses in question bespeaks an active monitoring program, assuring that the questionable responses will be the first posted and, thus, first (and sometimes only) ones seen; the consistency in tone and orientation and the brevity of the questionable responses bespeaks having been prepared by a common "messaging" organization.

If I'm not mistaken, Davies is the PR agency supporting Venoco. One can't see much of Davies' website ("To learn more about the firm, view a representative client list, or read staff bios...") without "registering" and being "personally approved" and given a passcode for access... Pretty closed for a communications firm, unless they're trying to avoid public scrutiny of their practice and practices... The best look at Davies one can get without their personalized approval is their Events listing at
http://www.daviescommunications.com/e....
The American Coal Ash Association convention is the first event they list...

Time to bust out the tin-foil hats!