Ventura County supervisors allow oil operator to re-drill 2 wells near Oxnard neighborhood
Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday upheld an appeal from an oil company, granting applications to re-drill two wells near Oxnard’s Lemonwood community.
Oil and gas company ABA Energy Corp. holds a special-use permit granted by the county in 1957. Last year, the company applied to re-drill wells in an unincorporated area near the city. After multiple appeals, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve the applications.
Supervisor Matt LaVere, who voted against approval with Supervisor Vianey Lopez, described the board's function as "very limited." Supervisors had to decide whether the project was in compliance with applicable county land-use rules and conditions in the operator's decades-old permit. That permit has no expiration date or limit on the number of wells and requires far fewer conditions than more modern permits.
In most cases, a land-use hearing involves a request for a discretionary permit, giving the board more authority to impose conditions or guide the project, said Jeff Barnes, the county's attorney.
This is a zoning clearance request, he told supervisors Tuesday. That means the project was not subject to an environmental review, and the board was not authorized to impose any conditions.
Supervisors Kelly Long, Janice Parvin and Jeff Gorell voted to OK the applications for the wells. LaVere and Lopez said they didn't have enough information.
"My review of this leaves me with a lot of questions," LaVere said after a three-hour public hearing.
He said he would want a lot more information moving forward from these kind of applications.
A series of appeals
County officials received scores of comment letters and nearly three dozen people spoke at the meeting either in person or via Zoom. Most on Tuesday spoke against approval. They included environmental justice advocates and Oxnard residents. Other speakers, including several oil and gas industry employees, spoke in favor of the request.
Climate First: Replacing Oil & Gas board member Gladys Limón said the oil company's applications had significant deficiencies and its responses on the documents "simply are non-responsive, promissory or ambiguous."
"It states, for example, that it will comply. It does not know how it will comply, or it is otherwise non-responsive," said Limón, an attorney.
"This is a serious matter with serious implications for environmental health, particularly of those impacted communities and laborers who work on these fields," she said.
The lease near a corner of Wooley Road and Rice Avenue is mostly surrounded by farmland.
The environmental group appealed the county's planning director approval of the applications last year. In December, the Planning Commission upheld its appeal when it failed to pass a motion to OK the zoning clearances. The oil company then appealed to county supervisors.
Al Adler of ABA Energy told supervisors the company has operated on the lease since 2010 and operations are regulated by several agencies, including the state and the air quality control board. The applications submitted were complete, he said.
The company was being charged with not providing something that it had not been asked to provide, he said.
"This is a very strange place to be where we've literally done everything asked of us," Adler said Tuesday.
Oil measures fail
Answers on the applications are not the sum total of determining compliance on conditions, county planners told supervisors Tuesday. The review included site visits and a technical review by a planner, said Dave Ward, the county's planning director.
Planners said they found ABA Energy had complied with requirements, which include that it must make efforts to eliminate dust, noise, vibration and noxious odors and remove drilling equipment within 90 days of completing the well.
The project may have needed more environmental review under changes supervisors made in 2020. Two land-use amendments called for a single, consistent permitting process and some level of environmental review, regardless of the age of the permits.
Within days of the former board narrowly passing the changes, opponents started collecting voter signatures to stop them from taking effect until the electorate could decide the issue.
Last June, voters defeated Measures A & B in what was the highest-spending campaign on a ballot measure in county history. The oil industry invested millions to preserve the long-held exemptions, outspending the environmentalists 7 to 1.
Decision not 'a value statement' on oil
Gorell said Tuesday that he heard "really good arguments" raised about gaps, unresponsive answers and less than satisfactory responses. But he thought the back and forth with county staff and the full review of the record shows the conditions had been satisfied, he said.
"I just want to make sure that folks don't look into this as some kind of a value statement on oil, because it's not," Gorell said. The decision was based on whether the applicant completed the document correctly and whether the information satisfied legal requirements "in a very narrowly tailored, ministerial process."
Lopez said she was not “completely sold” on compliance.
“Given that it is re-drilling of these wells, I would expect that there would be more information, more detail that could be provided,” she said. "While I understand and hear that this is a legal process, that all conditions have been met, that the compliance is there, that they haven't had any issues, it doesn't exactly make it right for our community in Lemonwood."
Cheri Carlson covers the environment and county government for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at cheri.carlson@vcstar.com or 805-437-0260.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Ventura County allows oil company to re-drill wells by Oxnard
