Hermosa Beach residents should shoot down oil proposal

Staff Editorial

Next year, Hermosa Beach residents will vote on a measure that could allow the oil company E&B Natural Resources to construct an oil well and drill for underwater oil off the city’s coast. A drill would be constructed in central Hermosa Beach, to remain in place for the entirety of the project. Hermosa Beach and its school district are projected to profit greatly from the venture as E&B seeks to enter in a contract with the city that will allow compensation for drilling rights, but residents still should be against the measure.

The proposal comes after years of legal battles between the city of Hermosa Beach and Macpherson Oil, another company that was previously given contractual permission to drill in Hermosa. E&B, in a deal in March 2012, paid Macpherson Oil to terminate its lawsuit with the city of Hermosa, loaning the city of Hermosa Beach $17.5 million to pay off Macpherson. In return, E&B was granted the guarantee of a Hermosa Beach ballot initiative in which the city’s residents would vote on whether or not to allow the company to drill in their town.

E&B claims that Hermosa Beach would gain up to $40 million annually for the first 10 years of the project and possibly more than $500 million total over the project’s 30-year lifespan. Hermosa Beach Unified School District could see $12 million in revenue over the course of the project. However, these figures should be read with discretion as they come from E&B.

The city has yet to release its own independent report on the revenue that could be earned from the proposed ventures, and until then, quantitative benefits and potential environmental hazards will not be made fully clear to the public. But E&B wants to enchant the Hermosa Beach electorate with these promises of safe drilling.

These do not, however, assuage the dubious background of multiple E&B higher-ups. President Steve Layton was previously involved with a dreadful oil spill in Louisiana during his tenure with Equinox Oil Company. Owner Francesco Galesi was involved with the WorldCom scandal and bankruptcy, the second largest bankruptcy in the history of the United States.

The financial benefits Hermosa Beach may reap would be without a doubt massive, but they do not surpass the impediment on the livelihoods of Hermosa’s citizens. Whether it be lost property value, environmental damage, or other intangible costs like unsightly towers, drilling would easily outweigh any positive programs additional money would give the city.

However, while oil drilling in Hermosa Beach raises many questions, local activist group Stop Oil Drilling in Hermosa Beach, one of E&B’s most vocal opponents, creates an environment of seemingly propagandized negative rhetoric. The group’s website, nobpinhb.com, features incendiary, one-sided vitriol against E&B’s drilling efforts that rival the questionable ethics of the oil company itself, showing both sides can have tendencies to deviate from the facts.

E&B Natural Resources has yet to prove that its intentions truly are in the best interests of the people of Hermosa Beach, while Stop Oil Drilling in Hermosa Beach needs ensure it does not alienate possible and deserved supporters. Both sides of the issue have their faults, but ultimately Hermosa Beach residents should choose to keep oil companies out of their city.