Bush moves to open (California) state coast to drilling [View All]

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

The federal government is taking steps that may open California's fabled coast to oil drilling in as soon as three years, an action that could place dozens of platforms off the Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt coasts along with the specter of spills, air pollution and increased ship traffic into San Francisco Bay.

Millions of acres of oil deposits, mapped in the 1980s when then-Interior Secretary James Watt and Energy Secretary Donald Hodel pushed for California exploration, lie a few miles from the forested North Coast and near the mouth of the Russian River, as well as in Santa Monica Bay and off Malibu and La Jolla in Southern California.

... The agency's last estimate puts about 10 billion barrels in California, enough to supply the nation for 17 months. That breaks down to 2.1 billion barrels from Point Arena in Mendocino County north to the Oregon border, 2.3 billion from Point Arena south to San Luis Obispo County and 5.6 billion from there south to Mexico.

... In California, any exploration and drilling would be close to shore, experts say. In contrast to the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling could occur in deep waters at 10,000 feet, California's holdings lie on its narrow, shallow continental shelf, the underwater edge of land where creatures died over millennia to produce the oil.

If the Interior Department decides to explore off California's coast, it could probably do so, some attorneys say. If a state objects to a lease plan, the president has the final say.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/28/MN4G14QMVE.DTL&type=politics&tsp=1