SHOOT LOW: According to P.T. Barnum, America’s famed hyperventilating huckster, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” But for the purposes of Venoco Oil Company’s schemes in Carpinteria, even those numbers may not prove sufficient.

For the past four years, Venoco has been chomping at the bit to build a towering onshore drilling rig that stands only a little bit taller than the Statue of Liberty on property it owns behind Carpinteria’s City Hall. It would overlook a nice stretch of what until now has been dubbed “the world’s safest beach,” not to mention the environmentally sensitive baby seal rookery below the bluffs. In deference to the aesthetic sensibilities of the natives, Venoco is proposing to dress up this rig to make it look like a giant lighthouse. The company’s idea is to tap into offshore reserves by drilling from its production facility onshore — which has been there for about 50 years — deploying a technology known as slant drilling. The proposal is known as the Paredon Project, though exactly what a paredon is — or are — remains uncertain even to some high-ranking Venoco execs. In Spanish, the word translates to “high wall,” or more precisely, as the sort of edifice one stands in front of when facing a firing squad. I’m guessing that name might prove unconsciously prophetic.

A couple months ago, Venoco unveiled plans to take its case directly to Carpinteria voters in a special election, thereby bypassing the normal environmental review process that would give the city’s Environmental Review Committee, Planning Commission, and City Council serious bargaining leverage when negotiating with the oil company over environmental impacts, mitigations, and conditions of approval or rejection. Given the environmental issues involved, I can understand Venoco’s eagerness to avoid the normal process. Naturally, they don’t admit this. Instead, they insist they’re only giving the people a chance to vote on a vitally important matter; the people, they claim, have told their pollsters they want such an election.

Venoco’s basic pitch is $200 million. That’s what Venoco claims the city would receive in oil royalties if Paredon goes forward. To get the initiative going, Venoco assembled an A-team of lawyers (Barry Fadem and Mark Mannion) and political campaign consultants (Larry Tramutola), all heavy-hitters known far and wide throughout California.

State law required Venoco to turn over its initiative text to Carpinteria’s city attorney, Peter Brown, who, in turn, is required to prepare a neutral-sounding title and summary of Venoco’s 57-page document. After that, the process of hiring paid — or unpaid — signature gatherers can commence. Brown balked. In fact, he flat-out refused. With the City Council’s blessing, Brown launched a double-barreled legal attack on Venoco, charging that the initiative language was chock-full of lies, misstatements, vagaries, and was otherwise unconstitutional for a million-and-one reasons. If Brown’s objections are upheld in court — and I’m betting they will — it won’t be akin to Venoco not making it to first base. It will be more like the whole team got arrested for drunken driving on the way to the ballpark.

Even so, Venoco has a lot going for it. The company spreads money around the community like peanut butter on a sandwich. They hire the world’s most likable employees who excel in the dark arts of meet ’n’ greet. They’re really good. Still, I couldn’t get four sentences into the initiative text before I tripped over a major whopper. “For the past 50 years, an oil and gas processing and transfer facility has been safely and efficiently operating on a 55-acre site behind City Hall,” it read.

Safely?

How safe could it be when the Air Pollution Control District (APCD) has listed Venoco’s Carpinteria plant on its annual list of Toxic Hot Spots every year from 1991 to 2008? To be fair, Venoco did not own the plant the whole time, having bought it from Chevron. But 17 years on the Toxic Hot Spot list remains a very dubious achievement. To qualify for this list, one has to generate enough toxic emission in a year to increase the number of cancer deaths for those living nearby by 10 in a million. Given all the fugitive emissions escaping Venoco’s safely and efficiently run Carpinteria plant, the APCD concluded the number of additional cancer deaths a year was no fewer than 30, three times the APCD’s action threshold.

The other whopper involves the $200 million Venoco is promising. According to the draft environmental report — which will be consigned to the trash heap of irrelevance should the initiative qualify and pass — the Paredon Project could generate anywhere from $10 million to $100 million during 20 years. That’s a pretty wide spread, but even at its most extravagant, it differs from Venoco’s estimate by a full 100 percent. The fact is nobody really knows. It all depends on how much oil there actually is (unknown), what price it’s fetching on the world market (unknown), and at what rate the State Lands Commission pegs the royalties (also unknown). State law seems to suggest that the local government will collect 20 percent of the royalties, but in this case, there are two — not one — local governmental entities with a claim on that loot: the City of Carpinteria and the County of Santa Barbara. How the money is split between the two remains anybody’s guess. In other words, unknown.

Last week, Venoco discreetly approached the Carpinteria City Council to see if there was interest in massaging the proposed initiative language into verbiage acceptable to both parties. Just as discreetly, the council concluded a meat cleaver would make more sense than massage oil given the profound differences of opinion about the initiative. Should the initiative ever make it to the ballot, I’m not sure Carpinterians — who are notoriously ferocious when defending their small-town traditions — are willing to sell out for a $200-million mirage.

In the meantime, I’d strongly suggest Venoco bring back the huge Santa Claus statue — formerly of Santa Claus Lane — to the South Coast, and put Jolly Saint Nick at the top of its proposed tower. Sure nobody believes in Santa Claus anymore. But that’s just the point.

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