To fully understand the depth of feeling about the local oil industry, you have to travel back in time, to January 1969. Many Santa Barbara County folks remember that time like it was yesterday.

There was a blowout on an oil platform in the Santa Barbara Channel. Crude oil gushed into the water, and through the natural forces of nature, oozed its way to South Coast beaches. The images of local residents struggling to save those beaches and their marine life were seen worldwide.

That was the dawning of the almost-virulent anti-oil era on the Central Coast. The industry that had produced so many jobs for so many years was reviled.

Activist groups sprang up, their main objective being to get oil out of Santa Barbara County. If there was an oil industry-related issue on a meeting agenda, there were anti-oil protesters outside the meeting-room door.

There were times when reporters covering those anti-oil protests believed a physical confrontation was just one more insult from happening.

All of which underscores the significance of an agreement between a Texas-based company and local anti-oil groups to get state approval for a new drilling project in the channel.

Plains Exploration and Production Co. wants to slant-drill into subsea oil reserves in the Tranquillion Ridge field offshore from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The company’s proposal has the full endorsement of many of the same groups that have been resisting more oil production so vigorously over the years.

The reason for this seeming contradiction is that environmentalists see the value of supporting a specific, state-of-the-art project, in exchange for a time-certain horizon for the company ceasing offshore operations, and for shutting down facilities that are dated and, thus, dangerous.

It doesn’t hurt the relationship that the oil company is going to donate 3,700 acres of land for public use, money for local transportation systems, and local and state governments will derive significant revenues from the oil operations.

You’d think this would be the perfect deal, and having the anti-oil environmental groups not only on board, but endorsing the proposal, would make it a sure thing.

Far from it. The state Lands Commission turned down the project in January 2009, in part because commissioners weren’t pleased with the private deal between the company and local environmental groups.

Those obstacles seem to have been cleared away. The groups held a press conference in Santa Barbara last week, announcing terms of the new agreement, and made everything open to the public.

Still, state Assemblyman Pedro Nava, a long-time South Coast environmentalist, objected to the plan, saying it sets a bad precedent by allowing more offshore drilling.

What Nava apparently doesn’t understand is that by allowing a date-certain window on the Tranquillion project — which is exactly 14 more years — the Central Coast could be spared decades more of offshore oil operations, using obsolete equipment, putting local beaches and marine life at far greater risk.

This proposal comes only a few days after the Obama administration announced its goal of increasing domestic oil production, to help America reduce its dependence on foreign oil. The Tranquillion project could be a positive step toward that goal.

We supported this deal when it was first announced two years ago, and we support this latest incarnation. We have great respect for the activists who fought so hard to preserve the beauty of the coastline, which is one of this area’s greatest natural assets.

We trust their judgment in endorsing this project, and for all the right reasons. And we think Pedro Nava is just wrong on this issue.

- Debra Geiler, Southern California Trust Director

- Linda Krop, Chief Counsel, Environmental Defense Center

- Santa Barbara Activist Selma Rubin

- Santa Barbara Activist Selma Rubin