Schwarzenegger now against new offshore drilling
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday withdrew his support for a controversial project that calls for oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast.
The Republican governor had supported a proposal, which last year had failed at the state Lands Commission, to generate $1.8 billion over 14 years by allowing oil drilling from an existing platform at Tranquillon Ridge off the coast of Santa Barbara.
The governor said Monday that his support for the Tranquillon Ridge project was based on “numerous studies that made me feel it was safe to drill,” and he was withdrawing support.
An April 22 explosion caused an oil spill from a BP offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that is releasing 5,000 barrels of oil a day. The spill threatens to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker disaster that spilled 11 million gallons of oil into the ecologically sensitive Prince William Sound.
Unlike that disaster, BP’s rig is tapped into an underwater oil well, not a tanker with a finite amount of oil.
“All of you have seen the devastation in the gulf,” Schwarzenegger said, citing birds drenched in oil and fishermen out of work. “This will not happen in California.”
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