A follow-up analysis and
multiple-agency report about how idle oil wells are monitored in Santa Barbara
County didn’t change the Board of Supervisors’ response to a critical grand
jury report released in December.
But supervisors generally
supported the idea of providing county staff with more tools to monitor the
thousands of active, low-producing, idle, orphaned and abandoned oil wells,
most of them located in the North County.
Supervisors unanimously
approved the staff’s recommended amended response to the grand jury report,
agreed to post annual reports on oil well monitoring online and asked the staff
to look into providing the Planning and Development Department with optical gas
imaging cameras to look for methane leaks.
The board also asked
long-range planning staff to consider incorporating incentives for oil
companies to properly abandon wells into ordinance revisions to be brought
before supervisors in the fall.
Exxon Mobil Corp. files
suit against county supervisors over denial of oil trucking permit
Supervisors chose not to
change the responses to the grand jury after hearing reports from Planning and
Development, the Fire Department, the County Air Pollution Control District and
the California Geologic Energy Management Division, which has oversight of oil
wells.
The board was pleased to
hear that $25 million has been secured to properly abandon about 170 of the 200
wells that were orphaned when Greka Oil went bankrupt.
A CalGEM representative
said the state organization is committed to properly abandoning all the wells.
But pleas from
representatives of the Environmental Defense Council, Santa Barbara Community
Action Network and Fact Tracker Alliance failed to convince the board to accept
and implement the grand jury’s recommendations.
The grand jury recommended
supervisors direct the Planning and Development Department to identify health
and environmental risks and determine actual and potential fiscal labilities
from idle wells in annual reports to the board.
It also recommended
supervisors direct Planning and Development to maintain enough trained
personnel to staff the Petroleum Unit of its Energy, Minerals and Compliance
Division and to enforce County Code requirements for removing equipment and
derricks from idle wells.
Supervisors’ consensus was
the county’s monitoring efforts, combined with those of the APCD and CalGEM,
are sufficient to protect the public and environment.
They found that
particularly true since a survey of Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Ventura and Los
Angeles counties showed Santa Barbara County is the only one with a staff
specifically tasked with monitoring oil wells.
“I believe methane leaks
are a very serious issue and contribute greatly to climate change, and the more
we can do there the better,” Board Chair and 3rd District Supervisor Joan
Hartmann said of the optical gas imaging cameras.
“We’re the only ones who
are out there every year, and others [are out there] every two years or every
three years,” she said. “So that means we’re the first ones who have eyes on
it, and if we can enhance our powers on it, that would be good.”
But she also suggested
APCD would be a better agency to post annual reports online.
Lisa Plowman, said
providing the staff with the optical gas cameras could be a viable tool, but
she said it would also depend on how much training they would require between
options that ranged in cost from $450 to $100,000.
Santa Maria Times
Mike Hodgson
May 24, 2022
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