Almost exactly a year after an oil pipeline owned by Plains All American LLP ruptured and spilled at least 143,000 gallons of crude oil into the coast at Refugio State Beach, Ventura residents awoke on the morning of Thursday, June 23 to yet another major oil pipeline spill. This latest regional oil calamity originated from an aging, 75 year old line known as the “V-10” which moves oil from Ventura oil fields to Los Angeles area refineries. The spill eventually released an estimated 30,000 gallons of crude into the Prince Barranca in a densely populated area within the City of Ventura adjacent to Ventura High School.
As required by EDC’s recent lawsuit settlement, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (“BOEM”) and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (“BSEE”) (agencies of the U.S. Department of the Interior) on Monday announced the availability of a draft environmental analysis of the use of fracking and acidizing from offshore oil platforms in southern California, including […]
More than any other industry, oil and gas companies have been provided with loopholes and exemptions from environmental laws, including nearly 95% of the oil wells drilled in Ventura County permitted between 20012 and 2014.
You may have heard about fracking and acidizing being utilized onshore in California, but offshore? As crazy as it sounds, oil companies have been fracking and acidizing from offshore platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel for two decades. Crazier still, until recently no one but the oil companies (including local elected officials and state regulators with the California Coastal Commission) was even aware that offshore fracking experiments were being conducted off California’s irreplaceable coastline.
