Photo by Samuel Lippke
1:00pm | With news outlets all aflutter with President Obama’s proposal to open new offshore drilling sites to increase domestic oil production – reversing a federal moratorium more than 20 years old – local minds soon began to wonder what this means for California.
Some articles expressed pleasure that California coastlines will apparently not be affected by the proposal, while others are calling for the President to “Drill Baby, drill” off the west coast near places like Santa Barbara. As it stands, there doesn’t look to be any new offshore drilling in California in the foreseeable future, and environmentalists scored that as a victory for preserving the coast.
But doesn’t offshore drilling occur in Long Beach each and every day?
I’m speaking, of course, of the THUMS oil islands that have operated just off the city’s coast for more than 40 years. The islands were once owned by each of the five major oil corporations, but have since come under new ownership and draw oil from beneath the city’s surface every day.
The islands are operated under local and state guidelines – not federal ones – because of their proximity to the shore, so they won’t be affected by President Obama’s proposal Wednesday to expand offshore drilling. In fact, the THUMS islands are hardly considered “offshore” at all.
The kind of offshore drilling that President Obama referred to in today’s announcement relates to drilling done several – sometimes more than one hundred – miles off the coast of Alaska, Virginia and some Gulf Coast locations. California sites were not included but the possibility of drilling off the distant coast of Santa Barbara and other cities has been rumored for years. That drilling would take place around the ocean floor’s outer-continental shelf, several miles offshore. Large rigs like that have existed off of our coast for decades, and some are beginning to reach the end of their natural lives.
In contrast, the THUMS islands operate just a few hundred yards from the shores of Long Beach. In fact, they are actually considered “onshore drilling” because they are so close to land, according to oil operations manager Curtis Henderson of Long Beach Gas & Oil.
The islands – now owned and operated by the Occidental Petroleum Corporation (OXY) – tap into the massive Wilmington Oil Field below most of Ocean Boulevard, downtown Long Beach and the port. Long Beach has long depended on the oil revenue generated by the islands’ drilling, and Chief Financial Officer Lori Ann Farrell last week told the City Council that increase oil production revenues will substantially help the city dig itself out of the $18 million deficit it faces in the upcoming fiscal year.
So while some rejoiced that California is not included in President Obama’s proposal to open new offshore drilling sites, those scenic drills will keep pumping away.