Letters to the Editor: Oil company decision to bypass Coastal Commission years after spill is ‘arrogant’

To the editor: Few communities know the devastation that oil drilling can produce as much as Santa Barbara (“Under Trump, Texas firm pushes to restart Santa Barbara oil drilling. Is it skirting California laws?” April 6). We have seen our beaches drenched in oil, our land despoiled and wildlife killed. Sable Offshore Corp. is full of promises that its operations will be safe and secure. Yet its arrogant actions to ignore cease-and-desist orders from the California Coastal Commission warn us that it cannot be trusted.

America produces more oil and gas than any other country on Earth. Do we need to risk despoiling a pristine coastal area to get more? Despite the Trump administration’s “drill-baby-drill” policies, responsible world leaders are phasing out fossil fuels and transitioning to cheaper, safer renewable energy.

The city of Santa Barbara’s 2024 Climate Action Plan, “Together to Zero,” provides a road map aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by 2035. There’s no place in that plan for more oil and gas.

Robert Taylor, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: I was a young mother in Santa Barbara at the time of the 1969 spill, a lawyer for Santa Barbara County at the time of the Exxon Alaska spill, when the county had to consider “tankering” of oil from offshore platforms, and I was a public member of the Coastal Commission in 2015, when the Refugio spill — the one from the same pipeline at issue now — poured from onshore, into the ocean, damaging 100 miles of coastline.

This is exactly why we have a strong, statewide Coastal Act. Sable’s claim that it doesn’t need permits for repairs in environmentally sensitive habitat is specious, and it has preemptively sued the commission. Now that Sable has acquired Exxon’s processing plant, as well as the pipeline — 10 years after the Refugio spill — for the sake of all our children, and grandchildren, all the permits should be revoked or deemed abandoned.

Jana Zimmer, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: The 1969 Santa Barbara disaster, the “environmental shot heard round the world,” helped lead to the founding of America’s most powerful coastal regulatory agency, the California Coastal Commission. The agency was singular for many reasons. Foremost, it was birthed by the people in 1972’s Proposition 20 and codified four years later with passage of the California Coastal Act. Oil drilling off our storied coast was thereby regulated. Texas-based Sable is working to unravel the commission’s regulatory authority. We must fight this effort. Contact Sacramento officials. Remind them that our treasured coast is the soul of California.

Tom Osborne, Laguna Beach

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To the editor: In the same April 6 edition of The Times there is an article about a Texas oil company trying to resume drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara and then a few pages later another article about an oil company that has been found liable for damaging coastal Louisiana (“Chevron ordered to pay more than $740 million to restore Louisiana coast in landmark trial,” April 6). What’s that definition of insanity again?

Larry Harmell, Granada Hills