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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/20/california-lacks-real-marine-protection-as-offshore-drilling-expands-in-state-waters/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/20/california-lacks-real-marine-protection-as-offshore-drilling-expands-in-state-waters/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">California Lacks Real Marine Protection
as Offshore Drilling Expands in State Waters</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/mrnhdyk111/"
rel="nofollow">Dan Bacher</a> - June 20, 2018</span></div>
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<p>One of the big news stories neglected by both the
mainstream and “alternative” media is the capture of
California politics and the regulatory apparatus by Big
Oil and other corporate interests in recent years – and
the massive expansion of offshore drilling that has
occurred in state waters under the helm of Governor
Jerry Brown as a consequence of this regulatory capture.</p>
<p>The enormous power that Big Oil exerts over California
regulators was inadvertently revealed in a March 10,
2012 <a
href="http://www.independent.com/news/2012/mar/10/coastlines-new-rules"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">article in the Santa
Barbara Independent</a> that discussed a so-called
“marine protected area” created under the privately
funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative that
went into effect on January 2 of that year.</p>
<p>The official language for the marine protected area in
the Isla Vista area of Santa Barbara County, the Campus
Point State Marine Conservation Area, reads, “<em>Take
of all living marine resources is prohibited, except
for take pursuant to operation and maintenance of
artificial structures inside the conservation area … ”</em></p>
<p>“The caveat, allowing marine resources to be taken near
artificial structures, exists to allow oil production
representatives the ability to maintain equipment,
including pipelines, located in this area,” the article
by Cat Heushul stated.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the reporter failed to mention the even
bigger story — that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of
the Western States Petroleum Association, actually
served as the Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act
Initiative to create this “marine protected area” and
others like it in Southern California.</p>
<p>She also served on the task forces to create “marine
protected areas” on the Central Coast, North Central
Coast and North Coast. If that is not a huge, glaring
conflict of interest, I do not know what is.</p>
<p>In yet another conflict of interest typical of
California politics, Reheis-Boyd’s husband, James D.
Boyd, first appointed by Governor Davis, sat on the
California Energy Commission from 2002 to 2012,
including serving as Vice-Chair of the Commission from
2/2007 to 1/2012.</p>
<p>I realize that the oil industry needs to maintain its
equipment near “artificial structures.” However, I find
it ironic and disturbing that anglers are prevented from
fishing in this so-called “Yosemite of the Sea” and
“underwater park” off Isla Vista while the oil industry
is allowed to “take” living marine resources — in a
so-called “marine protected area” created under the
Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.</p>
<p>But it gets even worse — it turns out that the
so-called “marine protected areas” created under the
MLPA Initiative in Southern California are not
specifically protected from the impacts of offshore
drilling operations and oil spills, creating a network
of oil industry-friendly faux “marine protected areas”
in the offshore drilling region of California.</p>
<p>This failure of the state’s regulators to
comprehensively protect the ocean from offshore drilling
is further exposed by the massive expansion of offshore
drilling in Southern California waters that began the
very year that the glorious “Yosemites of the Sea” went
into effect.</p>
<p>In February 2017, an analysis of Department of
Conservation data by the Fracktracker Alliance revealed
that Governor Jerry Brown’s oil and gas regulators
approved 238 new offshore oil wells in state waters
under existing leases off Los Angeles and Ventura
counties from 2012 to 2016, an increase of 17 percent.
Roughly 171 of them were still active as of a year ago.
To read the complete report, go to: <a
href="https://www.fractracker.org/2017/02/more-offshore-drilling-ca/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.fractracker.org/…</a></p>
<p>This expansion of offshore drilling occurs within the
context of the bigger picture of the expansion onshore
drilling for oil and gas in California. A <a
href="http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?DynEngagement=true&H=3ZUQjNycMu7D%2Fe%2Bm%2FOmi3Qi1eTNrfRb0HcFplK3KYerw%2B6SfjwwI9vTihShFMZBHrYo7IIWFdqYGOsvxi4s8YZvv3txS3wx3lbP6kluulXuO8tZue%2FPq2H5j73KvP1G29hhJXUOt584%3D&G=0&R=http%3A%2F%2Fpriceofoil.org%2Fca-oil&I=20180522130053.0000005bd6e4%40mail6-53-ussnn1&X=MHwxMDQ2NzU4OjViMDM0OTBiYzdiZjIyZTQ3NTEzNTU0MDs%3D&S=xGKnGxLWGzuTv5Lt5safisS72zOl2cycBwvPQjBOZ-I">report</a> published
on May 22 by Oil Change International, in collaboration
with California-based and national environmental justice
and climate groups, reveals how California’s climate
leadership requires a managed ramp-down of oil
production. A review of state permitting records in the
report “The Sky’s The Limit: California,” shows that
more than 20,000 drilling permits have been issued
during the Brown administration.</p>
<p><em>Bills to protect marine protected areas from
offshore drilling defeated by oil industry</em></p>
<p>Legislative efforts to protect California “marine
protected areas” from offshore drilling have been
countered by intense lobbying efforts by the oil
industry.</p>
<p>In 2014, I called Zeke Grader, the longtime executive
director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations who passed away in September 2015, about a
bill sponsored by Senator Hannah Beth Jackson to protect
a marine protected area, the Vandenberg State Marine
Reserve, from oil drilling, due to loopholes in both the
California Coastal Sanctuary Act and the Marine Life
Protection Act Initiative.</p>
<p>Grader, who supported the bill, pointed out how the
very need for the bill “highlights what a failure the
MLPA Initiative was.”</p>
<p>“If these are true marine protected areas, they why are
we allowing drilling and other insults to the ocean in
them?” asked Grader. “The whole MLPA Initiative was a
phony process that provided an opportunity for Big Green
and government bureaucrats to write press releases
claiming these were ‘protected areas’ when in reality
the fishermen and Tribes got screwed. We should have
bans on oil drilling in all of the marine protected
areas.”</p>
<p>And guess who led the charge to defeat this bill and a
similar bill to it, SB 788, sponsored by Senator Mike
McGuire in 2015? Yes, the very same oil lobbyist,
Reheis-Boyd, who oversaw the marine protection process
on the South Coast led the opposition to both bills to
protect “marine protected areas” from oil drilling.</p>
<p>State officials and MLPA Initiative advocates,
including NRDC, the League of Conservation Voters and
the Ocean Conservancy and other NGOs, continually hailed
the MLPA Initiative process chaired by the WSPA
president as “open, transparent and inclusive” when it
was anything but.</p>
<p>In fact, the MLPA Initiative failed to protect the
ocean from fracking, offshore oil drilling, pollution,
military testing and all human impacts on the ocean
other than sustainable fishing and gathering. Meanwhile,
the oil industry fracked federal ocean waters off the
Southern California coast (over 3 miles from shore) off
the Southern California at least 203 times over a 20
year period, according to an Associated Press
investigation in 2013.</p>
<p>The positive news is that two bills to block the Trump
administration’s plans to open new federal offshore
drilling leases off the California Coast, Senate 834 and
Assembly Bill 1775, passed off the Senate and Assembly
floors last week.</p>
<p>This legislation is specifically designed to counter
the threat to the marine ecosystem posed by the Trump
plan to open up new federal offshore drilling leases,
although it could also help efforts by
environmentalists, Tribes and fishermen to stop new
offshore drilling in state and federal waters under
existing leases.</p>
<p>“The passage of these bills will provide political
leverage to begin to address the dangers of new
development associated with currently existing leases in
both state and federal waters off the coast of
California — but it is narrowly and explicitly designed
to address the immediate offshore drilling expansion
threat from the Trump-Zinke plan,” said Gary Hughes of
Friends of the Earth US. “This is a step worth
celebrating as an important step to protect our oceans,
and we need to keep working hard to challenge extreme
fossil fuel energy extraction and processing in
California.”</p>
<p><strong>Big Oil dominates California lobbying expenses</strong></p>
<p>In spite of California’s “green” image, the state is
the third largest oil producer in the nation, right
behind North Dakota (second) and Texas (first). Big
Oil, Big Ag and other corporate interests have captured
the state’s regulatory apparatus by effectively buying
off the regulators by spending many millions of dollars
on lobbying every year and campaign contributions every
election season.</p>
<p>During the 2015-2016 Legislative Session, the oil
industry spent a historic $36.1 million to lobby
California lawmakers and officials. During the last 6
years, the industry has spent $122 million in
Sacramento, more than any other interest group.</p>
<p>Reheis-Boyd’s Western States Petroleum Association
(WSPA) was the top overall oil industry spender during
the 2015-16 session, spending $18.7 million. Chevron,
the second overall oil industry spender, spent $7
million in the 2015-16 session.</p>
<p>Big Oil also dominated three out of the four top spots
of expenditures by all lobbying organizations in 2017,
the year that the oil industry-written AB 398 passed
through the Legislature and Jackson’s bill blocking new
federal offshore drilling went into the suspense file.</p>
<p>Outspending all of their competition, Chevron placed
first with $8.2 million and the Western States Petroleum
Association (WSPA) placed second with $6.2 million.
Tesoro Refining and Marketing Company finished fourth
with $3.2 million.</p>
<p>That’s a total of $17.6 million dumped into lobbying by
the three top oil industry lobbying organizations alone.
That figure exceeds the $14,577,314 expended by all 16
oil lobby organizations in 2016.</p>
<p>WSPA and Big Oil use their money and power in 5 ways:
through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) getting
appointed to positions on and influencing regulatory
panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups: and (5) working
in collaboration with media.</p>
<p>On this World Oceans Day 2018, it’s important that we
work hard to get Big Oil money out of California
politics and make California’s faux “marine protected
areas” into real ones that actually protect the ocean,
as the Marine Life Protection Act of 1999 mandates.</p>
</div>
<p> <em><strong>Dan Bacher</strong> is an environmental
journalist in Sacramento. He can be reached at: Dan
Bacher <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:danielbacher@fishsniffer.com">danielbacher@fishsniffer.com</a>.</em> </p>
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