Houston Oil Company Seeks To Drill For Crude Undersea In California

Houston, TX (AHN) - A Houston-based oil company wants to try drilling for oil beneath the ocean floor in California, even offering to close its offshore oil facility near Santa Barbara County decades ahead of the original timetable to secure state approval of its underwater venture.

Plains Exploration and Production Company threw in a 200-acre donation for an oceanview lot at Gaviota coast and a 3,700-acre land in Santa Barbara to be used as public parkland. Earlier, the firm submitted a housing development plan on the Santa Barbara lot, which it would no longer pursue. In lieu of the housing project, PXP was willing to shoulder the tab for the purchase of low-emission public buses as a way of offsetting its greenhouse gas emissions.

The company even managed to get on its side through negotiations environmentalists who once opposed their operations. Beyond what it offered and agreed with the environmental groups, PXP vice president Steve Rusch told the Los Angeles Times it was willing to grant more concessions and even secure the support of the environmental groups.

Search for oil in the California has been stymied for three decades with prolonged lawsuits, congressional interference and bureaucratic delays.

With opposition now on their side, including the Get Oil Out group which had lobbied against oil drilling the past 39 years, PXP is expected to start drilling late April using slant drilling technology to search for oil at the Tranquillon Ridge. PXP expects their undersea drilling venture to tap into the area's estimated reserve of 200 million barrels of oil and 50 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

PXP last year bought Pogo Producing Company for $3.42 billion. Pogo owns production facilities in the U.S. and Canada, and undeveloped lands in New Zealand and Vietnam.