Oil Issues Forth

Thank you Mr. Mason for pointing this out.
Even with the supposed "end dates" more oil was going to be pumped through a pipeline than what would've otherwise occurred. EDC keeps saying "slant drilling will allow them to continue indefinitely." Slant drilling to where? Certainly not into California waters. If you don't let them have T-ridge they will run out of oil between 2022 and 2025. If they could slant drill to oil fields around Irene they would already be doing it. Unlike Mr. Williams, Ms. Jordan read the reports and paid attention to details.

Mr. Williams, on the other hand, can't be bothered by facts and details even when they put the coast at risk. This is not the type of leader we want representing us. Williams has already shown us that he will just take whatever position is politically expedient at the time.

Paul, you have hit the issue precisely. This was an ill conceived idea from the get-go. There is no legal way to end the drilling since it is from a federal platform. Regardless, trading the risk of a spill from a well drilling into a depleted field for one into a new, full, field, is unwise, at best. Susan was willing to stand up for what she believed in and be subject to criticism by people who simply joined the band-wagon without understanding the full issues. That's precisely the kind of leadership we need in Sacramento

Since Das used the PXP issue as his sole reason to jump into the race (fracturing lonstanding alliances in the process), his conscience should tell him to jump out of it now that the misguided deal is dead. Somehow I just can't see that happening.

With all due respect, why is Das considered exploitative for wanting to serve at the state level while SUsan isn't? Das has been active in local and state politics for literally half his life, starting with Bill Wallace's Supervisorial race in the 1980s and including a stint as Hannah Beth Jackson's legislative aide in Sac. He's done six excellent years on the SB City Council too. He's clearly got the experience and talent to do a good job in Sacramento.

For all Paul Masson's comments, he hasn't addressed the fact that the overwhelming majority of local enviros support the T-Ridge deal because it represents the ONLY way we currently have to END current production off our coast line. PXP would have to not only stop drilling, but take all four platforms and its onshore facilities away, meaning an end to production in federal leases that will otherwise get worked until the last drop of oil is out. The agreement was worked out by the incredibly smart and talented legal staff at the EDC -- non-lawyers like Masson and Susan are challenging its enforceability. Lois Capps supports the idea, as does pretty much every elected official in our County.

Susan is a smart woman, and there is no reason not to support her bid for office. But she and her supporters do her no service by slandering a man who has the respect and support of the community, just because he chose to run for the same office, or because he has strongly supported an agreement that is widely understood to be our best way to Get.Oil.Out.

While the PXP proposal and oil drilling is certainly important to many of us on the Central Coast, it is not the primary reason to vote for one candidate or the other on June 8th.

I am looking for the person who can go to Sacramento and build relationships with people even when they disagree, someone who commits to not voting for a cuts only budget, someone who has a proven history of being electable and who's successfully balanced budgets in difficult times. Das Williams is the candidate who can do all this and more!

As k9karma wrote above, the vast majority of the electeds in our county support the PXP proposal. I trust Lois Capps, Salud Carbajal and Hannah-Beth Jackson and am confident they have our best interests in mind. In addition, I have a great deal of respect for Linda Krop, the EDC and GOO who have fought for our environment for years.

Again, the bottom line is that this primary election is not only about oil, it's about getting someone elected who has the best chance of actually executing effective and substantive change in Sacramento. That person is, without a doubt, DAS WILLIAMS.

Just my two cents. :-)

What the EDC, HBJ and Carbajal don't tell you is that if T-Ridge never happens, Platform Irene would be dismantled anyway by 2017. Go read the EIR yourself:

http://www.countyofsb.org/energy/docu...

Or that the Pt. Arguello project with the other platforms they promised to dismantle are also almost out of oil. Go read it for yourself:

http://www.countyofsb.org/energy/proj...

So what you have here is a small bunch of enviros being PAID to make a deal with an oil company to extend the useful life of Platform Irene with 22-30 new wells right off our shore.

Every single major environmental group in the state is against this deal. The governor is against this deal. The majority of the Assembly is against this deal.

But the EDC and HBJ hang on because of stubborn pride -- and politics. And Capps? Well she's just too afraid to cross the EDC. Just look what happened to Susan Jordan.

k9karma says:

"The agreement was worked out by the incredibly smart and talented legal staff at the EDC -- non-lawyers like Masson and Susan are challenging its enforceability."

Point of order: It was the Attorney General's Office and the State Lands Commission staff that challenged its enforceability. In fact they ruled it was not enforceable at all.

Quit drinking the EDC's Kool-Aid.

The usual Nava-Jordan campaigners like to post the usual bogus rhetoric. If these posters ever studied oil spills, they would learn that the vast majority of oil spills are caused by human error. Since the 4 rigs that Nava-Jordan saved from being decommissioned will now have an extended life to drill for new federal wells and deep access to the Tranquillion oil well at a slower rate, the statistical odds of a new oil spill have now become much greater. Blind faith in Nava-Jordan by their campaigners without doing their own homework leaves us with inaccurate conclusions and a greater risk for another oil spill. Shame.

How so Georgy? From the EIR "No Project Alternative" (i.e. "No PXP Plan"):

By year 2017, it is assumed that the production volumes from the Point Pedernales field would no longer be economically viable. At that time, Platform Irene; the emulsion, gas, and produced water pipelines; and LOGP would be decommissioned and removed.

Longest possible time frame: 2022.

From the County:

"...Drilling and production are expected to end by 2011-2012, which will allow for the Lease 451 E reserves to be produced within the remaining productive life of the PXP Pt. Arguello platforms (Hermosa, Harvest, Hidalgo), which is estimated to be concluded by the year 2017. ..."

So the other three are nearly out of oil as well.

With T-Ridge project you add in in 22-30 new gushing wells (from 7,000 barrels per day - in 2008 - to 30,000 barrels per day) with unenforceable end dates and you have have exponentially increased the chance of a spill for up to 30 years from a platform which would've been decommissioned.

Read the EIR.

Stevesurf, your EIR is correct for the oil wells that are currently being harvested.

After those oil wells are no longer economically viable, they will drill for other new wells in federal waters. They are free to do so indefinitely. And they will. There are more oil wells in that region.

Hopefully Lois Capps and the U.S. Senate will finally do their job and we won't have to see that happen.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may20...

http://www.anwr.org/features/akeval.htm

California Surprises

"The MMS Pacific OCS report documents the oil and gas commodities, resource categories, data and methodologies of the assessment of the federal offshore area of California, Oregon and Washington.

Its significant findings include:

* Nearly 11 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 19 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas in the region may be recoverable using existing technology.
* Relatively large volumes of undiscovered oil may exist offshore central and southern California, due largely to the presence of Monterey-type strata, which are potential source and reservoir rocks.
* Half of the undiscovered, conventionally recoverable oil and gas in the region may be economically recoverable under existing conditions.

Cathie Dunkel, MMS geologist in Camarillo, Calif., served as the report's principal editor. She said the apparent extent of Monterey-type plays and the possible large volume of undiscovered oil in these plays offshore central California were the assessment's biggest surprises.

"Bottom-line, the volume of potentially fractured siliceous rocks offshore California is much larger than we previously thought," she said. "Only nine of the 46 plays we assessed contain these Monterey-type reservoir rocks, but those nine plays, all offshore central and southern California, are estimated to contain more than half of the undiscovered oil and about a third of the undiscovered gas."

Monterey-type plays offshore central California and in the Santa Barbara-Ventura Basin comprise the region's top five plays, based on estimated undiscovered oil resources, she noted.

Dunkel, a 16-year MMS veteran, found pursuing a geologic hypothesis the most intriguing part of the assessment process. She cited suggestions that the onset of petroleum generation in the area's Neogene siliceous rocks (Monterey formation or correlative) coincides with the temperature at which the diagenetic quartz facies forms.

"For many years it's been recognized, or at least speculated, that siliceous rocks of increasing diagenetic grade are more brittle and have greater potential to be fractured, and of course to have more fracture porosity," she added.

Using newly acquired mineralogic data from well samples, MMS was able to identify the stratigraphic location of the diagenetic facies in many of the wells and to correlate them with structurally anomalous reflectors on seismic profiles, Dunkel said.

The resulting improved understanding of the stratigraphic and areal extent of the siliceous rocks and their facies led to the conclusion that larger-than-expected volumes of Monterey-type rocks - including potentially generative source rocks and potentially fractured reservoir rocks - exist offshore California."

The report you just posted was from 1998. If there was something else out there, they would've found it by now.

No, PXP wants T-Ridge. Three miles from shore. Massive throughput. Not part of federal ban Boxer and Feinstein are now pushing.

But you still think it is a great idea. The horse has been beaten to death now. The train has left the station. Time to put a fork in it.

Stevesurf,

If you think all the oil has been tapped, then wait till your supposed end dates come and then watch.

If you think the Monterey formation on the edge of the Pacific plate has magically disappeared in the last ten years then you may be right. I like to make decisions based on science.

If Boxer, Garamendi and Feinstein get their way, there will be no new drilling in federal waters. Your T-Ridge plan, if it had been approved, would've been the only new lease out there.

Three. Miles. From. Shore.

And hey! Loved the independent expenditure mailer paid for by tribal gambling money that told us DW did not like oil drilling (even though he likes PXP.)

Have have been waiting 40 years for the Feds to do their job. We'll see.

It would be major. Environmental groups like EDC wouldn't have to do it all on their own. The in-action by the Federal Gov. over the last 40 years is why there are deals to end oil drilling on a private basis.

The mood of the Congress is advantageous right now, but often politicians like Boxer, Garamendi and Feinstein just use this for political posturing to get re-elected while their bill flounders and dies. But I hope they get it done in spite of themselves.

Nava knows all about tribal gambling money as he helped pioneer the field. Das is no angel either, but at least he listens to reason and doesn't blindly follow his own agenda.

Nava and HBJ both took a little tribal money but neither are in Williams' league with major contributions plus a Tribal Gambling PAC now doing mailers for him. I note that Jordan doesn't take tribal cash.

DW blindly followed the EDC with the PXP deal. We can definitely say blindly because he signed on to a secret deal that nobody could read. It would appear only to be Republican extremists in the state legislature and a handful of SB enviros who think this is a good idea now.

"Another concern is the use of the windfall of their casino profits to expand land or authority through political means as they have already attempted through legislators Assembly Members Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) and Joe Coto (D-San Jose), and Senate Majority leader Dean Florez (D-Shafter) who were behind bills AB 2686 (would have given tribal governments authority over the public water supply), bill SB 170 (would have dismantled the Williamson Act), and the renaming of highway 154 to the “Chumash Highway.”

http://cbs13.com/local/california.law...

http://www.noozhawk.com/politics/arti...

http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Campaign/...

http://www.santaynezvalleyjournal.com...

Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians — $3,000 (11/23/09)
Pechanga Band of Mission Indians — $2,000 (4/5/09)
Pechanga Band of Mission Indians — $1,000 (8/17/09)
Rumsey Indian Rancheria — $3,000 (8/18/09)
Santa Ynez Band of Mission Indians — $1,000 (3/25/09)
Santa Ynez Band of Mission Indians — $2,000 (12/9/09)

Looks like Pedro is beholden. I love the way he takes payoffs from other casino tribes to avoid the attention from his own district.

California Tribal Business Alliance Independent Expenditure PAC

In Support of Das Williams - State Assembly District 35
Filed Date: 5/14/2010
Amount: $17,006.19

PLUS

Das Williams for Assembly
Viejas Tribal Government $2,500.00
San Manuel Band Of Mission Indians $3,900.00
Barona Band Of Mission Indians $2,500.00
Picayune Rancheria Of The Chukchansi Indians $3,900.00
California Nations Indian Gaming Association $2,000.00
Santa Ynez Band Of Mission Indians $2,000.00
Santa Ynez Band Of Mission Indians $1,000.00
Total $17,800.00

GRAND TOTAL TO WILLIAMS: $34,806.19

Total tribal gambling contributions to Susan Jordan: ZERO

Looks like Das is beholden. I love the way he takes payoffs from other casino tribes to avoid the attention from his own district.