County Curious About Venoco’s Oil-Extraction Techniques

As far as the County of Santa Barbara was concerned, “fracking” was a potential problem plaguing nearly every other oil and gas harvesting community in the nation except ours. That is until now. With the recent discovery by county energy’s Doug Anthony that the common yet controversial oil-and-gas-extraction technique is, in fact, being used by the folks from Venoco Inc. on two separate leases in the North County, 3rd District County Supervisor Doreen Farr took the matter public at the start of this week’s supervisors’ hearing.

Asking for a full presentation on the subject to the board from staff early next month, Farr said simply, “I’ve learned that the activity they call fracking is actually taking place in our county right now. … This issue has been in the news a lot lately, and I think a simple information presentation would be beneficial to both the board and the public.”

Technically known as hydraulic fracturing, fracking is a way of getting crude, natural gas, or even water, from places deep within the Earth that typically aren’t very productive. It involves pumping pressurized liquid into wellbore at such a rate that the pressure beneath becomes so great that the surrounding rock cracks and the oil flows up and out at a greater rate than normal. While fracking has been fairly typical in certain types of drilling situations since the mid 20th century, alarm has risen in recent years about the toll that such practices take on the surrounding environment.