The California State Lands Commission has terminated three oil and natural gas leases held by Chevron Corp. off the coast of Santa Barbara County, a move that would put the 11,000-acre site permanently off-limits to exploration and production.

Chevron had not discovered any oil and gas at the site and had offered to surrender the leases in April, said Paul Thayer, executive officer of the commission.

The move to put the site permanently off-limits to drilling underscores Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rejection of calls by presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain and the Bush administration to lift the state’s moratorium on new offshore drilling (see Daily GPI, June 19; Oct. 3, 2006).

McCain attended an environmental roundtable meeting Tuesday in Santa Barbara, and some of his energy policies were rejected by participants, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Michael Feeney, executive director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, told McCain that it would be unwise to “drain America’s offshore oil and gas reserves as quickly as possible in the hopes of driving down the cost of gasoline” because it would take years before the resources could be extracted, the newspaper reported.

“We should be saving as much as possible the oil resources of this country, because we are going to need those for a long, long time to come, and we should be mostly focusing on reducing demand and improving efficiency,” Feeney said.

California has not issued any new offshore leases since the 1969 oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast.

In related news the California Department of Conservation reported that drilling activity has increased about 2% from a year ago in the state’s oil and gas fields, likely a reaction to higher commodity prices. However, the volume of production continues to decline, the department noted. Oil and gas output to date this year is down 2.3% to 243.2 million boe, which is the lowest level since 1941.

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