California oil spill ignites array of protests against industry

By Nichola Groom LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - This week's oil spill in California has become a springboard for environmental groups to attack the oil industry, with calls ranging from a ban on fracking in the Golden State to a halt to drilling in the far-flung Arctic. Two days after a pipeline rupture began spilling 105,000 gallons of crude oil onto a beach and into the Pacific Ocean west of Santa Barbara, several environmental groups held a rally on the steps of the town's Spanish-style County Courthouse on Thursday to call for an end to fracking in California. Organized by a handful of organizations that included Food & Water Watch, Center for Biological Diversity and Californians Against Fracking, the rally drew 150 people, including the city's mayor and other local officials. The group held up signs that read "Ban Fracking Now" and "Get Oil Out!" Although the latest spill may be smaller than some recent accidents that poured hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the oceans, its location invoked memories of the large 1969 oil spill along the same pristine coastline that helped spark the modern U.S. environmental movement. The latest spill sparked protests against a wide range of issues, such as fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, which involves pumping water, sand and chemicals into a well to extract oil or gas. Environmentalists argue the practice is dangerous as it risks contaminating ground water. "Those practices represent an expansion of oil and gas in California at a time when we should be phasing it out," said Sandra Lupien, a spokeswoman for Food & Water Watch, which is renewing its call on Governor Jerry Brown to ban fracking and other advanced oil extraction techniques. "We hope that Governor Brown sees this as another case in point for the need to end fracking," she said An industry spokesman said that none of the oil that travels through the burst pipeline was extracted using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. "There is absolutely no link between hydraulic fracturing and this week's release of oil at Refugio Beach," Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, said in an email. The pipeline system receives crude from two offshore oilfields. No fracking has taken place offshore of Santa Barbara, Hull said. Still, environmental groups are not missing the chance to voice their grievances against fossil fuels. The Natural Resources Defense Council used Santa Barbara to highlight its opposition to importing tar sands oil from Canada to California and to expanding drilling in the Arctic in blog posts this week. Greenpeace used a blog post about the spill to link to a form letter to President Barack Obama asking him to rescind Royal Dutch Shell Plc's drilling lease in Arctic waters. (Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Leslie Adler)