Friday, June 26, 2009
The Tranquillon Ridge Project proposed by Plains Exploration & Production (PXP) is a common sense plan to leverage a precious California resource to generate billions of dollars in new revenue to the California General Fund and Santa Barbara County while also providing significant environmental benefit. Not to mention the energy it would provide to hungry markets here in the United States.
Our state and county face the worst fiscal crisis in many decades and voters already made it clear in the recent election that they will not tolerate more taxes. Tranquillon Ridge is a measured and responsible way to use domestic oil and gas reserves in state waters to create revenue immediately and for years to come. Consider:
• Once the project is approved, PXP gives the state an immediate royalty advance of $100 million, plus about $1.8 billion during the next 14 years in royalties and taxes.
• Santa Barbara County would get approximately $313 million in new property tax revenues during the next 14 years. As much as $45 million of that would go to local firefighting—a clear priority in this area prone to disastrous wildfires. PXP also will donate $1.5 million to the county for new transit bus technology to reduce greenhouse gases. This new revenue could not come at a better time.
• At the end of the project, PXP will donate 3,900 acres of land it owns along California’s Central Coast for permanent conservation, will remove its oil and gas facilities near Lompoc and along the coast, and shut down operations of four platforms it operates off the Santa Barbara Coast.
So what’s the holdup?
Despite an outpouring of support from dozens of Santa Barbara elected officials, environmental groups, and other organizations including the S.B. Technology & Industry Association, the project was voted down by the State Lands Commission in January. But now we have a second chance to make this happen.
The governor has asked the Legislature to pass a bill providing limited authority to the State Director of Finance to reconsider certain offshore oil lease applications and determine if they are in the best interest of the state. The bill—its language currently under discussion in committees though not yet drafted—would outline very specific criteria to apply to Tranquillon Ridge or any other project to which the legislation applies. There still would be an intensive public review process, including hearings before the California Coastal Commission and the federal Minerals Management Service.
The legislation would contain multiple means of enforcing the Tranquillon agreement as it was originally hammered out between PXP and environmentalists, especially the Environmental Defense Center. State Lands Commission leases, county and Coastal Commission permits, and an option allowing the California Attorney General to intervene are among the safeguards that both protect the public interest and serve the best interest of the state and our county under very difficult financial circumstances. We must urge our legislators to step up and make the Tranquillon Ridge Project a reality.
Joe Armendariz, a member of the Carpinteria City Council, is writing in his capacity of the Santa Barbara Technology & Industry Association.