An association of offshore producers has filed a lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission, asking a federal court to enjoin the agency from its efforts to subject platform operators in federal waters off the California coast to state regulations controlling the discharges of drilling fluids, cuttings and muds and other wastes.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on Wednesday, involves a jurisdictional dispute in which the California commission wants the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to apply state water quality standards to platforms operating on federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) waters, said Frank Holmes, manager for the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), which brought the suit.

The California commission “clearly is overstretching their authority and trying to expand their jurisdiction beyond state waters,” Holmes told NGI. All the EPA regions, as well as producers, “are watching closely what goes on here” in this case. Some fear that a court ruling favorable to the California commission could have repercussions for other coastal regions, such as the Gulf of Mexico.

Sacramento, CA-based WSPA filed the lawsuit on behalf of 22 member companies that operate platforms in federal waters on the OCS beyond California’s state waters. The group has asked the court to issue a permanent injunction ordering the California commission to “cease and desist” from enforcing state water quality standards on production platforms in the OCS.

The dispute began last December, when the EPA proposed a new draft general permit to replace expired permits regulating discharges from oil and gas activities on the OCS offshore California. The new general permit was designed to protect the quality of California’s water by requiring producers to conduct sampling to determine if there was a “reasonable potential” for “authorized discharges” to negatively affect state waters, according to the lawsuit. The EPA had concluded that the proposed updated general permit was consistent with California’s coastal management plan.

In March, however, the commission objected to the EPA’s ruling because it claimed the proposed permit did not impose the California Ocean Plans’s (COP) limits for discharges. The commission wanted activities conducted on the federal OCS to be “regulated as though they were located in California’s territorial seas,” the suit said.

As a result of the commission’s action, the owners and operators of oil and gas production platforms in the federal OCS offshore California will not be able to use the updated general permit for discharges when it is issued by the EPA, it noted. Rather, each WSPA member will be required to go before the commission with their individual consistency applications.

“These proceedings will be futile unless the WSPA member companies acquiesce in the commission’s unlawful demand that the COP objectives be included as discharge limits” on federal waters, the lawsuit said.

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