The current Solimar Beach Fire raging north of the City of Ventura is threatening numerous oil drilling and storage areas adjacent to Pacific Coast Highway along the Rincon coast of northwestern Ventura/southeastern Santa Barbara County.
Lipstick on a Pig? It appears to be no coincidence that ExxonMobil has recently released a new series of beautiful and very slick TV and online ads implying that they are all about innovation and very interested in alternative energies. (Their most recent releases are below:) Reality is far from the images portrayed in this… Read more »
The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE seeks to usher in a new era of deep exploration of the oceans. This will both help with/foster both basic and applied research. Not the least of which will be to boost our understanding of baseline conditions before subsequent impacts from deep sea mining of oil/gas extraction.
News is just breaking that the repair of the embattled trunk line delivering crude oil from Refugio’s onshore distribution facility to refineries in Kern County that ruptured last May and caused the Refugio Oil Spill may take a long, long time to repair. While I have found such estimates to almost assuredly be overblown, the sheer order… Read more »
Source: Southern California air board puts new restrictions on urban oil fields – LA Times We have seen a spate of complaints about air quality near our urban oil fields here in southern California over the past few years. This appears related to increased use of hydraulic fracturing methods to free up oil and gas… Read more »
A New Spill? We are getting several reports in recent hours of oil washing up in and around Summerland, CA (south of the city of Santa Barbara). At this point, the source is unclear. As with the sighting in late July, this could well prove to be simply heightened seep oil activity, but the volume… Read more »
Unstranding Stranded Oil Venoco’s Ellwood Onshore Facility and Mobile Line 96 has had a bunch of pent up oil since the May 19 pipeline break (and associated shutdown) of the Plains All American Pipeline. Shutting down the Plains All American main pipeline stranded oil in upstream feeder lines. Venoco was finally granted permission to use… Read more »
Wow! I guess dreams really do come true. At least when it comes to critiquing federal agencies in the wake of an oil spill. And when the agency that has been understaff and under-resourced bears some of the blame for an oil spill, you bet that we can all get on board the you are to… Read more »
This past Monday, I returned to the KVTA Morning show with Tom Spence and Rich Gualano to discuss the past month in our Refugio Oil Spill saga. We discuss the evidence that pipeline oil spanned at least three counties, the problem with a lack of access in the early part of the spill timeline, and… Read more »
One of the many policy consequences of the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil was a strong regulator of oil drilling and transportation at the county level in Santa Barbara County. Santa Barbara County’s Planning and Development Department’s powerful Energy Division is an amazingly strong office with a suite of powerful permitting and oversight tools across oil… Read more »
