poll in July<\/a> by the Public Policy Institute of California, a non-partisan research organization, found that 65% percent of registered voters in California oppose new drilling and 34% support it.<\/p>\nOpponents have a long list of methods to slow and potentially defeat new drilling plans, as they have in the past.<\/p>\n
First, Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, signed a law in 1994 banning new drilling in state waters out to three miles.<\/p>\n
Second, more than two dozen local governments, including Sonoma, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, San Diego, Mendocino and Humboldt counties, have passed local ordinances back to the early 1990s that ban construction of new pipelines, storage tanks, helicopter landing pads and other infrastructure where oil from new offshore platforms could be delivered, stored and processed.<\/p>\n
Third, California has five national marine sanctuaries \u2014 Cordell Bank, Gulf of the Farallones, Monterey Bay, Channel Islands and the Chumash Heritage sanctuary, established last year by the Biden administration. Those extend from Point Arena in southern Mendocino County to Gaviota, off Santa Barbara. Oil and gas drilling is permanently banned in those areas under federal law.<\/p>\n
Finally, if the Democrats win back either the House or the Senate next November, they could block the new drilling efforts by refusing to fund the Interior Department\u2019s leasing programs, as they did in the 1980s when Leon Panetta, then a Monterey congressman, blocked all funds for the Reagan administration to pursue new drilling off California.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to stop this,\u201d said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael. \u201cWe are going to kill it off.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the California Coastal Commission, state Attorney General Rob Bonta and others are likely to file lawsuits aimed at blocking new drilling.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor decades, California has stood firm in our opposition to new offshore drilling, and nothing will change that,\u201d said Gov. Gavin Newsom. \u201cWe will use every tool at our disposal to protect our coastline. It\u2019s interesting that Donald\u2019s proposal doesn\u2019t include the waters off Mar-a-Lago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some oil industry officials praised Thursday\u2019s move, although it remains unclear if oil companies will want to bid on leases in a state where they will face years of lawsuits, political opposition, and protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe applaud Secretary Burgum for laying the groundwork for a new and more expansive five-year program that unlocks opportunities for long-term investment offshore, and supports energy affordability at a time of rising demand at home and abroad,\u201d said Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute.<\/p>\n
Critics said the new drilling was not likely to affect gas prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cOil companies admit it would take a decade or longer to produce oil and what is there would barely move the needle,\u201d said Mike Levin, D-Carlsbad. \u201cOne spill would shut down our beaches, would kill our wildlife, would hammer small businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration on Thursday released plans to open the entire California coastline to new offshore oil drilling,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,37840,37838,37839,13265],"class_list":{"0":"post-62751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-california-oil","12":"tag-california-oil-drilling","13":"tag-ocs","14":"tag-offshore-oil"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}