Schwarzenegger secures Santa Barbara

Like a horror-movie monster that pops up again after being pumped full of more holes than a pepper shaker, a plan to expand oil drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara just kept rising from the dead. Until now. After the ongoing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico delivered a better-late-than-never epiphany to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, he announced Monday that he no longer supports the proposal.

Given that the prime contenders for Schwarzenegger’s job, Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman, both say they oppose new offshore drilling (Whitman says she’d approve new projects only if the environmental risks were next to zero), that ought to put a stake in the plan’s heart. If President Obama and key members of Congress come to similar conclusions, the tragedy unfolding off the coast of Louisiana could have some positive outcomes.

The Tranquillon Ridge drilling project has been heavily promoted by a Santa Barbara-based environmental advocacy group formed in the wake of a catastrophic oil spill that fouled the city’s beaches in 1969. The Environmental Defense Center claimed to have reached an ironclad agreement with Plains Exploration & Production that would accelerate the company’s closure of four offshore platforms in exchange for the right to drill under state waters from an existing rig. It was an attractive offer, but not quite good enough. State officials pointed out that it would be impossible to enforce the deal because there is no way for the state to compel the federal Minerals Management Service, which oversees drilling in U.S. waters, to acquiesce to the closure of the platforms.

Schwarzenegger and other recently converted ocean defenders apparently believed oil industry claims that technological improvements had made spills a thing of the past, until last month’s rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico proved them wrong. The blast is thought to have killed 11 workers, and the resulting spill now endangers one of the nation’s most important fisheries; it could poison sea life for decades. Expanding offshore drilling, as Obama and supporters of a key energy and climate bill propose, just isn’t worth such risks.

Drilling proponents rightly point out that the nation needs oil and that domestic supplies are the most secure. But new drilling rights approved now are unlikely to be developed for 20 years — and if we’re still as reliant on oil in 2030 as we are now, the country and the planet will be in deep trouble. Contaminating the nation’s coast in pursuit of a 20th century energy source is an idea whose time has gone. To make sure it doesn’t return once memories of the gulf spill fade, Congress should restore the federal moratorium on new offshore drilling.