As the United States waits to see what decisions newly-elected President Trump makes during his administration, the most recent environmental decision came from the exiting former President Joe Biden. On January 6, the day Congress voted to certify Donald Trump’s win in the 2024 election, Biden announced the withdrawal of 625 million acres of offshore coastal waters from the possibility of new oil leasing. The ban would remove waters in the Eastern Seaboard, Oregon, Washington, the Gulf of Mexico, the Northern Bering Sea, and the Pacific Coast of California from being considered for new offshore oil and gas drilling indefinitely. Included within this ban is Santa Barbara, meaning that while current oil platforms will not be removed,no new ones will be implemented while the ban is in effect. 

Oil drilling has a complex history within the city of Santa Barbara. The first offshore oil drilling rig in the United States was built in the Santa Barbara channel in the late 1800s. In 1969, an offshore oil platform spilled over 100,000 barrels of crude oil into the Santa Barbara channel. The oil leaked from the well for over a week, covering local beaches and threatening many Southern California shoreline areas. The catastrophe helped launch the environmental movement in the US, prompting the creation of the very first Earth Day and cementing Santa Barbara’s identity as a city dedicated to protecting the environment. 

Biden issued the oil leasing ban as an executive order, citing unnecessary risks to public health, the environment, and coastal communities caused by offshore oil and gas drilling platforms. President Trump has vowed to undo the drilling ban as soon as he enters office, reflecting his campaign promise to “drill, baby, drill.” Reversing the ban, however, will not be so simple. Trump does not have the authority to reverse the action, and the decision must go through Congress, where oil leasing bans typically find bipartisan support from representatives in coastal communities. Trump made the same vow to undo environmental actions taken by Barack Obama in 2017 without success. In 2020, Trump enacted a 12-year ban on new oil leasing off the coasts of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Currently there is no active drilling or exploration taking place in the 625 million acres declared off limits by Biden, and the last time an oil company leased any federal waters off the coast of Southern California was in 1984. 

Many critics of fossil fuels see the ban on new oil leasing as a step in the right direction. About 15% of crude oil and 2% of natural gas are produced from offshore drilling in the United States. As part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, it was stipulated that leases for offshore wind development may not be granted unless 60 million acres for oil and gas leasing had been offered in the previous year. Oil platforms can have negative impacts on ecosystems during construction, and oil spills pose huge risks to the environment. Additionally, cleaning up after these spills and decommissioning the platforms is expensive. While proponents of the ban see the lack of new oil platforms as a positive, existing rigs are in no danger of removal based on Biden’s order. Sable Offshore recently announced a proposal to reactivate a plant along the Gaviota Coast and resume drilling at three offshore platforms. The platforms have been closed since 2015, when a ruptured oil platform spilled more than 120,000 gallons of crude oil, blackening Refugio State Beach and killing hundreds of birds and marine animals. Sable Spokesperson Alice Walton said, “President Biden’s proclamation does not affect Sable’s operations.” 

AP Environmental Science Teacher Alena Kahn says that while there may be no immediate change caused by the ban, it represents a move away from fossil fuel use. “Symbolically it is a great way to shift our focus away from oil and gas. For California it won’t really bring about any change. It doesn’t change any existing oil and gas drilling, so all the oil and gas drilling that’s currently happening can still carry on…For people who want more that’s kind of a bummer, but it’s good news for the future that no more oil and gas drilling will be started off our coast,” Kahn said. The future of the energy industry from here, Kahn feels, is uncertain. “It goes back and forth with each administration. In general, most of the American public is becoming more aware of the problematic reliance on fossil fuels…It just takes more recognition from the public that shifting away from fossil fuels is going to become really important to cause real change without relying on the whim of the current administration.” While there aren’t any immediate implications for Santa Barbara, “It’s not an easy place to start new drilling. I don’t see that happening in the near future, but 50 years from now it might be open season, so it’s good to have it protected long term.”

The offshore oil industry in California has been on a long decline. There are 23 remaining offshore oil platforms, eight of which are no longer functioning and six that are currently being decommissioned. One of these is Platform Holly, a once productive rig two miles off the coast of Goleta. Holly was shut down after the 2015 oil spill, and State Lands has been supervising the plugging and abandoning of the platform since 2017, and the decommissioning of the platform is currently being approved. The issue of what will happen to these platforms after they have been decommissioned has been a matter of much debate within the environmental community. Platforms can either be totally removed or the steel jacket can be cut 85 to 90 feet below the sea surface. Oil platforms serve as a synthetic reef for animals and invertebrates that would normally be living in natural rock reefs. To remove these platforms completely would mean destroying the ecosystems living on them. Dr. Milton Love, a research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, sees the issue of life for these platforms after decommission as two-sided. “If a person wants reefs of California that are full of life and they don’t care what the reefs are made out of, then you want to retain as much of a platform as possible…there are some people who are just opposed to anything artificial in the ocean and who think that this is wrong,” Love said. “Most people who support the ban would say that we have to get off our addiction to fossil fuels, and this is one of the ways we can do it…The counter argument is that people will just import more oil from other countries and nothing will change,” Love explained of the various arguments surrounding the new ban. “Symbolically I think (Biden) wants to leave the legacy of decreasing the emphasis on fossil fuels, and this is a symbol that he and his people think is important. Whether it actually has any effect or not, how would we know?…I imagine in the waning days of this administration, there may be other symbolic acts that are important to a lot of people that may or may not have long term benefits.” As far as Sable’s proposal to reactivate the three platforms off of Gaviota, Love said, “Like everything, part of the decision will be political, and so the people in charge probably will throw a straw into the wind and see which way it blows.”

As the leadership of the United States faces a major transition, citizens must wait to see how long Biden’s recent ban on new offshore oil leasing will live. While the impact of the ban may be minimal, opponents of fossil fuel use see it as an important step forward, and one that they hope is protected from the “drill, baby, drill” mentality of incoming president Donald Trump. 

[Platform Holly, an oil rig seen here off of Haskell’s Beach in Goleta, has been decommissioned and is in the process of being approved for removal Image Credit: Mary Moses]