CIPA Mobilizes Oil Workers and Royalty Owners for Critical Santa Barbara County Hearing

Tomorrow, approximately 60 oil workers, royalty owners, oil company employees, and other supporters of local energy production are expected to descend on the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting to oppose the County's proposed ban on new oil and gas wells.

If you live, work, own mineral interests, or have business operations in the area, we encourage you to attend the hearing and consider providing public comment. The most powerful testimony comes from workers and royalty owners sharing, in their own words, what local oil production means to their families, careers, and communities. The meeting will take place at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday, September 15) at Betteravia Government Administration Building, 511 Lakeside Parkway in Santa Maria.

CIPA has been working with its members and other affected stakeholders to coordinate turnout for the September 15 hearing, where the Board will consider ordinance amendments that would prohibit new onshore oil and gas wells and the reentry of previously abandoned wells. Many of those attending are expected to speak directly to the Supervisors about what the proposal would mean for their jobs, families, businesses, and property rights.

The message they will carry is straightforward: California still needs oil, and banning its production in Santa Barbara County will not eliminate the demand for it.

Instead, every barrel no longer produced locally must ultimately be replaced from somewhere else, increasingly by crude produced outside California and transported thousands of miles across the ocean into the state. California workers produce oil under some of the world's most stringent environmental, labor, and safety standards. Shutting down that production exports the jobs and economic benefits, not California's petroleum demand.

CIPA's formal comments to the Board also emphasize that the ordinance reaches well beyond the oil companies themselves. Local production supports skilled, high-paying jobs, contractors, and service companies while generating tax revenues that support County services. Royalty and mineral owners also have legitimate property interests tied to lawful oil and gas production, some of which have existed for generations.

Of particular concern is that the proposed prohibition is being characterized as “Phase I.” CIPA believes the Board must consider where that policy could ultimately lead. The County has also begun exploring amortization as a potential means of eliminating existing, duly permitted production. A ban on new wells and reentry therefore risks becoming the first domino in a broader effort to force oil production entirely out of Santa Barbara County.

CIPA is urging the Board to regulate responsibly rather than prohibit categorically and to fully evaluate the economic, environmental, energy-supply, property-rights, and legal consequences before permanently foreclosing future oil production.

Tomorrow's turnout is intended to put real people behind that argument. Oil workers, royalty owners, and company employees will be there to remind Supervisors that decisions made in a government hearing room have consequences far beyond zoning maps and policy documents.

The choice is not between using oil and not using oil. The choice is whether more of the oil California continues to need will be produced here, by California workers operating under California standards, or imported from thousands of miles away.

CIPA's position is simple: Produce it here.