New chapter in offshore oil debate on North Coast

The three-decade war over oil drilling on the North Coast is shifting to a more measured consideration of wind and wave power generators along the rugged and scenic seascape.

President Barack Obama?s preference for renewable, carbon-free energy appears to be buffering the Sonoma and Mendocino shoreline from the prospect of oil rigs irrevocably associated with the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969.

That 4 million-gallon spill, which propelled a nascent environmental movement into the mainstream, brought offshore oil development to a halt in California.

But last year, President George W. Bush lifted the drilling moratorium imposed in 1981, raising the prospect of oil exploration on nearly all of the nation?s offshore lands, including the North Coast where protection of the seashore and saltwater verges on religious passion.

Gas prices above $4 a gallon drove that decision last summer. Now fears of global warming are driving a national re-examination of how best to tap the energy potential along the nation?s coasts.

Those perspectives will collide Thursday at a public meeting in San Francisco called by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who has placed a half-year hold on the Bush adminstration?s plan to to uncork restrictions on offshore oil development.

Richard Charter of Bodega Bay, a veteran anti-drilling advocate, said Obama and Salazar favor renewable energy sources, such as wind and waves.

?Getting away from carbon-based fuels is a matter of survival,? Charter said. ?We may have protected the North Coast just long enough for society to wake up.?

But there are strong counter-currents from the oil industry, which insists that fossil fuels will anchor an energy-hungry nation?s menu for at least another generation.

Even as alternatives such as solar, wind and biomass provide more energy in the future, oil and natural gas ? both pumped copiously from beneath the sea floor ? will provide half the nation?s supply through 2030, according to government forecasts.

The U.S. will need 11 percent more energy in 2030 than it did in 2007, the forecasts say.

?We need it all,? said Joe Sparano, president of the Western States Petroleum Association. ?We can?t afford to push existing fuels off the table.?

In San Francisco, as in previous meetings on the East Coast, Gulf Coast and in Alaska, Salazar has invited citizens, public officials, advocates and native tribes to testify.

By year?s end, Charter believes Salazar will propose a plan for locating oil and gas wells, along with wind and wave generators, on the 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf, which generally lie from three to 200 miles off the nation?s coasts.

Mike Gravitz, oceans advocate for Environment America who attended the New Jersey meeting last week, said that Salazar ?made it clear the administration would give priority to developing renewable resources in the ocean.?

But the overtures also bring new worries for anti-drilling stalwarts such as Rachel Binah, a retired Mendocino County innkeeper who jumped into the oil battle in 1984.

Binah, who is also a Democratic National Committee member, has filed a motion to intervene in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission?s review of a proposal to study wave energy potential off the Mendocino coast.

Power generators that literally ride the waves are preferable to oil rigs, Binah said, but she?s concerned about the unknowns of an untested energy source. Is it safe? Will it harm fish or fowl? What will it look like? Who will regulate it?

Charter, a consultant for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, thinks windmills could find a place on the North Coast because they are a more mature technology than wave generators ? and also will not contribute to global warming.

?We?re not in a position to turn down anything that doesn?t put carbon in the atmosphere,? he said.

But offshore oil deposits, which currently provide 27 percent of the nation?s supply, remain part of the nation?s energy equation.

Untapped reserves off the California coast are estimated at 10.5 billion barrels of oil, which could be extracted at a rate of 800,000 barrels a day for 35 years. That would exactly offset the 800,000 barrels of oil California now imports every day, despite being the third biggest oil-producing state, behind Texas and Alaska.

?That?s a big deal,? Sparano said.

Twenty-three oil and gas platforms, located in federal waters off Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, pump 63,000 barrels of oil per day.

Most of the oil-drilling arguments, pro and con, are by now well-rehearsed.

?The ocean is very precious to us,? Binah said. ?We absolutely cannot afford to degrade it any more than we already have.?