{"id":391,"date":"2005-09-21T18:33:12","date_gmt":"2005-09-22T01:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/?p=391"},"modified":"2022-08-11T18:22:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-12T01:22:06","slug":"ventura-county-supervisors-assail-president-bushs-energy-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/2005\/09\/21\/ventura-county-supervisors-assail-president-bushs-energy-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Ventura County Supervisors Assail President Bush’s Energy Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The board votes to send a letter opposing administration moves to expand oil drilling off the coast and in Los Padres National Forest.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source of this article<\/a> – Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2005<\/p>\n

By Catherine Saillant
\nTimes Staff Writer<\/p>\n

Ventura County supervisors Tuesday waded into the controversy over oil and gas drilling in the county’s backcountry and off its coast by opposing the Bush administration’s energy-development plans.<\/p>\n

Although the board has no say in a decision, it made clear its opposition to administration plans to make leases available in Los Padres National Forest, which straddles Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.<\/p>\n

Supervisor Steve Bennett, who asked his colleagues to take a position, said it’s important to let federal policymakers know that local officials support conservation as a way of dealing with diminishing oil supplies at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

“Don’t put the environment at risk just because we lack the political will to increase fuel-efficiency standards,” Bennett said.<\/p>\n

The board voted 4 to 1 to outline its opposition in a letter to the U.S. Forest Service.<\/p>\n

Most of Tuesday’s debate dealt with forest-drilling proposals, but the vote included the board’s opposition to expanding oil-drilling operations off the Ventura County coast.<\/p>\n

Its action comes a week after California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer filed an appeal of a July decision by Los Padres National Forest Supervisor Gloria Brown to open up leases in the forest.<\/p>\n

Under the proposal, 4,277 acres would be available for drilling leases, about one-half of 1% of the 767,000 acres being considered for energy development.<\/p>\n

The use of slant-drilling technology would minimize the surface impact of operations to 21 acres, according to the Forest Service.<\/p>\n

Although the area being opened up is relatively small, expanded drilling could follow, Bennett said.<\/p>\n

Supervisors also questioned whether the risks of oil spills and industrial pollution on wildlife outweigh expected benefits.<\/p>\n

If all the leases were opened, the Forest Service estimates the drilling would produce 17 million barrels of oil.<\/p>\n

That output is barely enough to supply one day’s worth of consumption in the United States, board Chairwoman Kathy Long said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not a good cost-benefit return in my opinion,” Long said.<\/p>\n

The board’s lone dissenter, Judy Mikels, said she sympathized with the board’s environmental concerns. But adopting a blanket rejection of drilling is “sticking your head in the sand,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We are unreasonably tying our own hands in the production of oil and gas that we need to use,” Mikels said.<\/p>\n

Mikels also objected to the board stepping into what is essentially a federal decision.<\/p>\n

“This is federal policy,” she said. “We have no direct impact on this.”<\/p>\n

The other supervisors, however, said they hoped to exert influence on the process.<\/p>\n

“All politics is local,” Supervisor John Flynn said. “We need to discuss these things, especially when this administration is not moving in a positive way on conservation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The board votes to send a letter opposing administration moves to expand oil drilling off the coast and in Los Padres National Forest. Source of this article – Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2005 By Catherine Saillant Times Staff Writer Ventura County supervisors Tuesday waded into the controversy over oil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,53,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drilling-or-mining","category-us-forest-service","category-ventura-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3922,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}