Third in a series

Re “Sentinel Pullout Amounts to a $$ Edge”

Energy continues to be expended and expanded over what drama will be rolled out in the next year over Culver City’s corner of the Inglewood Oil Field.

The City Council is expected to approve the hometown version of tightened regulations as early as February or as late as March.

Whether Sentinel Peak Resources, the public relations-shy owner of the entire oil field, will seek to halt implementation of narrower rules will not be known until next spring.

“That is the only hiccup I see,” said City Councilman Jim Clarke.

“SPR may take legal action against the new rules.

“Since their study of the oil field is not due to be finished until a year from October,” Mr. Clarke, “they may come in with a project that is significantly different from the Specific Plan we have put together, based on our best estimates.”

City Hall is flying along on one crutch instead of two in assembling new oil field regulations.

The city’s version, Councilman Clarke said, “is based on past history there – but with no input from Freeport-McMorin about what the future plans were.”

(Sentinel Peak Resources replaced Freeport McMorin last January as the oil field operator.)

Putting the city’s version of 2018 rules into perspective, Mr. Clarke concluded:

“What we are really doing is projecting 15 years forward by looking into the rear-view mirror and seeing what has transpired over the last 10 years.”