Citizens’ Suit Forces Angus to Give Up Oil-Drilling Rights

Residents who have battled 18 months to block a $25-million oil-drilling project in their Huntington Beach neighborhood have forced Angus Petroleum Corp. to agree to relinquish city approval for the operation and try again, it was announced Friday.

“We are going to celebrate any which way we can,” a gleeful Pamela Steele, vice president of Concerned Citizens of Huntington Beach, said Friday.

If the Huntington Beach City Council votes Monday night to follow through on the out-of-court settlement--and set aside an ordinance that now allows Angus to drill 60 new wells on its property--then the Colorado-based firm will have to start from scratch on the project.

That means Angus will have to reapply for the permits and again go through the public hearing process before the Planning Commission and the City Council--time-consuming and expensive delays.

“We are disappointed but not defeated,” Angus spokesman Spencer Sheldon said Friday. “We believe this is a good project for the city because it allows for consolidation (of operating oil wells), and we will pursue that.”

Concerned Citizens of Huntington Beach earlier this year sued the city, Angus and a former councilman, John A. Thomas, charging that the project was approved illegally.

The group said that Thomas had done subcontracting work at the Angus site, then cast the deciding vote to approve the Angus operation in October of 1986. Thomas, who has refused to comment on the issue, is now under investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for what would be a conflict of interest and a violation of the state Political Reform Act.

That very issue is at the heart of the lawsuit settlement and one of the few points Angus and the residents agree on, Steele and Sheldon said Friday.

They said Angus agreed that the citizens would prevail on the Thomas issue and wanted to settle the case rather than spend more money fighting a losing lawsuit.

The other key point in the agreement calls for Angus to pay $40,000 in attorney fees for the Concerned Citizens. This was said by those involved to have been the last issue of contention among the three parties in suit. The city, as a condition of allowing Angus to drill 60 new wells at its site, had required the firm to indemnify and defend Huntington Beach in any court action that resulted from the approval.

Surrounded on all sides by hundreds of houses, apartments and condominiums, the Angus site has been a source of controversy since the company sought permission to drill there in 1986.

The two-block property where the oil field and storage facilities were under construction is essentially a field of mud, a stark contrast to the rest of the tree-lined neighborhood near the residential intersection of Delaware and Springfield streets.