The end of a Central Coast oil era
Possible alternative uses considered
-March 16,2023-
The end the oil era is clear along the Central Coast. Now two former petroleum-based enterprises may still have an alternative future even as they are mothballed.
Production has ceased at Platform Irene in the Santa Maria Basin offshore Vandenberg Space Force base in California. Irene, the first platform installed in the Santa Maria District in 1985, was a milestone in Pacific OCS development. Only 7 of the 23 Pacific offshore oil platforms are still producing. The Platform would deliver oil by pipeline for processing at the Santa Maria refinery owned by Conoco Phillips which has just shut down.The Conoco oil pipeline to the Bay Area will also be decommissioned. With no place to send oil, Irene has ceased operations.
Conoco says their 1,780-acre Santa Maria Refinery, located adjacent to State Highway 1 on the Nipomo Mesa, sits on about 200 acres, or roughly 11 percent of the land.The remainder is grazed by cattle, held as open space or used as a preservation area for wildlife in the Nipomo Dunes.
Santa Maria Refining operations was scheduled to cease in the first quarter of 2023. Shutdown of the facility is related to the planned conversion of our San Francisco Refinery in Rodeo to one of the world’s largest renewable fuels facilities, which stands to help California meet its demand for lower-carbon transportation fuels and achieve its environmental goals.
The Santa Maria Refinery employed 78 employees and 53 contractors. The company notified these individuals of the refinery shutdown almost two years ago and are in the process of helping our employees either remain with the company at another location or secure other job opportunities locally.
We intend to remediate the site at 2555 Willow Road in Nipomo following the shutdown. They expect the remediation process to take several years.
Now the question for both the offshore platform and the former refinery is what’s next – could they both have some environmental an/or renewable energy future?
The platform is owned by Freeport-McMoRan Inc who will have to completely remove the structure unless some alternative use saves them the expense. The structure, minus the oil equipment, has been discussed amor use as an attractive reef for fish habitat as well as a wind energy platform. They could use the existing 5 mile pipeline to shore to connect to the grid.
As for the refinery newly elected SLO County Supervisor Jimmy Paulding helped lead a study to repurpose the refinery in a 2021 study.Here is some text for there study. i
The analysis was produced by two separate student-led projects at Cal Poly, and explored a half dozen different repurposing uses for the Phillips 66 facility that is slated for closure in 2023. Potential reuses analyzed for the site include desalination, green hydrogen generation, grid-scale battery storage, plastics recycling, an anaerobic digester for organic waste, and conservation. According to preliminary analysis commissioned by the Central Coast Economic Recovery Initiative (ERI) and the Institute for Climate Leadership and Resilience at Cal Poly (ICLR) the partners commissioned the research and connected students with local subject matter experts to provide technical expertise and guidance. The ERI and ICLR plan to support additional analysis by graduate student researchers, faculty, and subject matter experts in the future.
“The purpose of this preliminary analysis is to get the community thinking about the possibilities for the site once the oil refinery closes. Currently there are over a hundred full time jobs supplied by the plant that will need to be replaced, and there are millions of dollars worth of infrastructure that will become stranded assets if nothing comes of the facility after it closes,” according to Jimmy Paulding, Arroyo Grande City Council Member and Principal Author of the ERI.
Now that Paulding is a member of the Board of Supervisor, we asked if there is anything new about the issue. Here is what has legislative aid ,James Sofranko said.
“Supervisor Paulding has gotten wind of interest among companies who are evaluating the site for potential reuse but the details of which are not yet known. As far as he knows, at this point Phillips 66 is working through the process with the County to obtain permits and conduct environmental review in order to complete demolition of existing facilities and site remediation.”