Offshore oil drilling is a dirty business. Air and water pollution are routine, as are small spills, accidents and operational violations.

It’s also a risky business, with the threat of a catastrophic spill—one that could spoil the ecology and economic value of affected beaches for generations—always a real possibility.

The vast majority of Californians know all this; that’s why opposition to offshore drilling has remained strong for decades. Yet there are still some in the oil industry and in Washington who think they can overcome this opposition and expand California’s offshore drilling operations. Among them: California’s own Richard Pombo.

Last year, Pombo, the congressman from Tracy who represents parts of four California counties, proposed an amendment that would have allowed drilling off of our coast. Called the “Ocean States Option,” the amendment would have lifted a 24-year moratorium on new drilling in federal waters.

There was near-unanimous opposition to this amendment from the rest of the California congressional delegation and from state elected officials. In a letter to Rep. Pombo, Gov. Schwarzenegger said, “This moratorium has been in place for 24 years and enjoys widespread support from the people of California, including bipartisan support from elected leaders.”

Thanks to the work of U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (Santa Barbara), Gov. Schwarzenegger and others, the amendment was removed from the federal budget bill at the last minute. However, with oil industry lobbyists pushing to exploit rising energy prices as the latest rationale for expanded offshore drilling, there’s still a chance that this provision could end up in the final version of the Budget Reconciliation Act, which will be voted on later this year.

The dirty effects of offshore drilling
Offshore drilling activities produce a steady stream of pollution, and destroy kelp beds, coral gardens and coastal wetlands.

Sometimes, the effects are far worse. In 1969, one of Unocal’s offshore platforms spilled 100,000 barrels of oil off the Santa Barbara coast. Within days, the spill contaminated 800 square miles of water surface, stretching to the Mexican border. Millions of birds died, fish stocks were decimated, and beaches were left covered in oil.

For many Californians, these memories are still fresh, making it all but unthinkable that government would allow a dramatic expansion of offshore drilling. Yet the threat is real. The debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has drawn the lion’s share of media attention, yet similar drives to open more of America’s natural treasures to drilling are underway in Congress.

Off California’s coast, drillers are reworking wells and considering reviving old platforms in places where exploration is allowed. They’re attempting to extend the life of leases on undeveloped offshore tracts holding a combined estimated 1 billion barrels of oil and 500 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

We have cleaner, safer options
Oil drilling proponents say we need the oil and gas. They would like us to believe that we can drill our way out of our nation’s energy problems.

They’re wrong.

Opening our shores to drilling would put our beaches and coastal waters at great risk for a relatively small, short-term supply of oil and natural gas. As Environment California’s Dan Jacobson said, “Allowing drilling off our shores was wrong for our coasts 24 years ago and it’s wrong for our country today. We can do better.”

Jacobson cites just one example of how California and the nation can better meet our energy needs. If our cars and trucks got an average of a couple more miles per gallon, he says, we’d save more oil than exists off the entire coast of California. Yet federal gas mileage standards haven’t significantly changed in 20 years.

In December, Environment California Research & Policy Center released “America Idles,” a report that details how much money and oil Americans would have saved in 2006 had the Bush administration increased gas mileage for cars and trucks four years ago. The report showed that in 2006 alone:

• California would have saved 54,949 barrels of oil per day; and

• California would have reduced our carbon pollution by the equivalent of 655,647 vehicles.

To date, however, some members of Congress, including Richard Pombo, have ignored these cleaner, safer options in favor of more drilling—a plan that falters even on economic grounds. For example, the federal Energy Information Administration has determined that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would reduce gasoline prices by only a penny a gallon 20 years from now.

Environment California has called on California’s congressional delegation to support bills sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin (Ill.) and Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.) to raise gas mileage standards to 40 miles per gallon over the next 10 years. We’re also urging Congress to take steps to permanently protect California’s coast from offshore drilling.