The federal agency that proposes more oil drilling in coastal waters from Ventura to Morro Bay predicts a 94% chance of a major oil spill off Southern California in the next 30 years.
Based on a history of accidents, the federal Minerals Management Service also predicts a 100% chance of a moderate-size spill--about the size of the American Trader tanker spill that blackened several miles of coastline in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach last year.
The agency plans to announce in July the risk associated with drilling for oil on the 500,000 acres it proposes for development off the coast of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. This stretch of coastline has most of the state's existing offshore oil platforms and is the only area off California targeted for more drilling in this decade.
Earlier calculations showed that drilling for oil in the 500,000 acres and other new areas off the coast make up 4% of the overall risk of a major oil spill and 5% of the risk of a moderate spill. Agency experts anticipate little change when the new risk analysis is released.
These predictions cover spills of at least 1,000 barrels, or 42,000 gallons--roughly 100 times the size of the spill from Unocal's Platform Gina that created a five-mile oil slick off the Ventura County coast May 10.
Smaller spills occur too frequently to bother calculating the risk, agency officials said.
"Everything carries a risk," said J. Lisle Reed, Pacific regional director of the Minerals Management Service. He said his agency must balance potential ecological damage and cleanup costs with what it predicts will be the tremendous windfall from tapping oil reserves in the Santa Barbara Channel.
"Can we tolerate an oil spill like the American Trader spill every 10 years, in exchange for the opportunity to produce billions of dollars worth of oil off Southern California? In the macro picture, it is obvious that the benefits outweigh the risks," Reed said.
Most state and local officials sharply disagree. They recently launched a campaign to halt additional oil leases off the stretch of coastline from Ventura to Morro Bay.
"There has been an automatic assumption that any magnitude of oil drilling was acceptable because of our need for oil," Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy said. "I take serious issue with that."
McCarthy contends that California's remaining offshore oil reserves would only supply a few days of the nation's energy needs and do not justify the risk of a major oil spill.
