Five tri-county economic trends we’ll be watching in the New Year
Conventional wisdom holds that with a federal budget in hand, a financial system on the mend, rising housing prices and steady job growth, 2014 ought to be a pretty darn good year.
Mafi-Trench gears up: Santa Maria manufacturer plans for new plant
James Reilly has been pushing for a new manufacturing plant to bring about 100 new jobs to Santa Maria for two years, and now the real work of getting it financed is about to begin.
A speed bump on the way to creating a chamber-led vitality group
The most concentrated effort to date to create a Santa Barbara County economic vitality organization has hit a roadblock. And that roadblock appears to be the Board of Supervisors’ bitterly divided vote on the Santa Maria Energy project, where South County supervisors banded together to impose severe carbon emissions limits on an innovative onshore oil and gas development that had broad support in North County.
Central Coast stands to be ground zero for cable market shakeup
You might call it the Central Coast Cable Conundrum.
And it goes something like this: During the national rollup of cable television properties that took place in the 1990s, a number of major players grabbed a sliver of the region.
Emissions cap prompts oil firm backlash
Santa Barbara County’s decision to impose a strict cap on carbon emissions from a proposed oil project puts the county at a competitive disadvantage in California and likely will cut into the money energy firms pump into the regional economy.
The Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on Nov. 12 to require Santa Maria Energy to cap its carbon emissions at 10,000 tons per year. Santa Maria Energy had proposed 136 wells for a site near Orcutt.
Santa Barbara County’s oil is thick and viscous. In order to extract it, companies inject steam into wells to soften the oil. Burning natural gas to create the steam is what generates the bulk of carbon emissions.
