Texas oil company dangles (many, many) carrots in bid for offshore drilling lease

An oil company from Houston is so eager to cash in on skyrocketing prices, is has made an offer sweet enough that even its fiercest opponents are backing its plan to drill along the California coast, Kenneth R. Weiss reports.

...Plains Exploration & Production Co. -- known as PXP -- also has agreed to donate about 200 acres of oceanview property along the sparsely populated Gaviota coast and an additional 3,700 acres in Santa Barbara's premier wine-growing region for public parkland. It would withdraw a proposed housing development on that land and pay millions to fund projects that offset carbon dioxide emissions, such as low-emission public buses.

Crude oil prices have quadrupled since 2002, when Santa Barbara County refused PXP's request to drill 22 new wells that would go at least 3,000 feet into the sea floor. But the company now comes calling with a goody bag loaded with thousands of acres of gorgeous, coastal land, and promises to stop some controversial developments.

You can read Ken's story here. And for photos of the huge oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast in 1969, a primary reason officials have long resisted new drilling, click here. 

--Veronique de Turenne

Photo: Rich Reid

Comments

[john]

Remember when oil was $10/barrel and gas was $1.47/gal? Remember when the supreme court gave the presidency to George W Bush? Badda bing.

[Doug in Toronto]

I thought that California would have had enough of Texas-based energy companies after the Enron business...