Aera Pulls Plug on Cat Canyon Oil Proposal

Aera Energy announced it was pulling the plug on its application to expand cyclic steam injection operations at its Cat Canyon fields just outside Santa Maria, long a focus of significant concern by local environmental organizations. The company’s spokesperson, Rick Rust, said that the cataclysmic plunge in the world oil markets — describing it gently as “global uncertainties” — coupled with the political uncertainty facing Aera’s project if and when it got appealed to the County Board of Supervisors drove the company’s decision. 

Traditionally, environmental organizations didn’t focus much on onshore oil developments, but that all changed as escalating concerns over global warming came to occupy center stage in political debates regarding oil production. Aera’s was one of three proposals slated for Cat Canyon that relied on an energy-intensive oil extraction technology — injecting steam deep into the ground to loosen the bountiful hydrocarbons from the soils to which they adhere. Those projects combined would have generated about 700,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases a year, and, as a result, they became the focus of concerted environmental opposition.

Aera’s proposal was slated to have gone before the County Planning Commission last summer, then it was delayed until this January, and then it was delayed again. Aera, a partnership of ExxonMobil and Shell oil companies, could read the political tea leaves as well as anyone; last fall, the company submitted revised plans that would have reduced the number of wells from 296 to 185, explaining that, in the words of spokesperson Rust, “We listen, we listen, we listen.”