Stop Venoco Offshore Oil Drilling Expansion

Venoco, an oil company that operates Platform Holly – the only oil drilling platform in state waters – proposed to California's State Lands Commission to expand its existing leases offshore the city of Goleta. If approved, the project would have constituted the first new or expanded lease in state waters since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Approving an expanded oil lease and allowing new drilling in state waters would contradict the commission’s own unanimously approved December, 2017 resolution against any further oil development off California’s coast. Along with Surfrider, activists from the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Center and NRDC asked the State Lands Commission to not approve this proposal, prompting two of the three commissioners to publicly speak out against it.

On April 17, received documents from Venoco, LLC quitclaiming its interests in the South Ellwood Field leases, including Platform Holly and the Goleta Beach Pier leases offshore the City of Goleta, Santa Barbara County. This effectively ended commercial oil and gas production in state waters at that location in the Santa Barbara Channel and returned operational control of these assets to the Commission. California’s Coastal Sanctuary Act prohibits the Commission from issuing new offshore oil and gas leases. The Commission will now begin the process of decommissioning Platform Holly.