Why Tar Still Washes Up on Summerland Beach, and Which Old Wells Get Capped Next

If the state has been capping Summerland's old oil wells for eight years, why is there still tar on the beach below Lookout Park?

The answer comes down to scale. Since 2018, crews have sealed nine legacy wells on Summerland Beach, at a combined cost of about $11.4 million. According to Heal the Ocean's latest findings, as reported by Edhat, the Summerland area alone still has several hundred high-priority legacy wells that could leak oil into the ocean. The cleanup is a long, slow sequence, and the main question now is which wells go first. Two pieces of work coming up over the next several months will help settle that.

July's tar turned out to be a different story

In mid-July, the Santa Barbara Independent reported an unusual amount of oil and tar on beaches across the South Coast, Summerland Beach among them. For a few days it looked like a spill.

The state's own account says otherwise. The Office of Spill Prevention and Response, part of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, laid out its July response in the packet for its October 2026 Technical Advisory Committee meeting. Staff first responded at Carpinteria State Beach on July 15, then at Butterfly Beach on July 16, where they took two samples for the state's Petroleum Chemistry Lab. On July 17 they walked Carpinteria State Beach, Santa Claus Lane Beach, Summerland Beach, Miramar Beach, Shoreline Beach and Mesa Lane Beach. The summary ends plainly: "No anthropogenic source was identified. No further action on these reports was taken."

So no tanker, pipeline or platform was found behind it. That fits the history of this shoreline. The State Lands Commission notes that the Summerland field was developed in the 1890s around natural oil seeps. The Commission's staff also sit on a quarterly seep working group with the Department of Fish and Wildlife and UC Davis. That group is building an oil seep map and using oil fingerprinting to trace the source when someone reports a sheen. Tar on this beach can come from more than one place, and telling those places apart is a research problem in its own right.

An oil field that started on the sand

According to the State Lands Commission's 2025 progress report, Summerland's first wells went in on the beach itself. Later ones were drilled from piers running out into the Pacific, and production ended in the early 1900s. The wells the state is now re-abandoning date from that era, and the ones still waiting their turn sit along the same shoreline.

The same report puts wells A through D in what it calls Area 1. It describes that stretch as heavily used by the public and reachable from Lookout Park, with vertical timber piles and other debris around the well casings slated for future work. In other words, the stretch of sand most people reach from the Lookout Park ramp is where the remaining work is.

The ledger so far

Taken together, the Commission's project summary and Heal the Ocean's records show the work one well, or one pair, at a time.

Becker got done first because of local pressure. In August 2015, after oil contamination closed Summerland Beach, Heal the Ocean brought agencies and contractors together on August 27 and made capping the Becker inshore well the priority. Work began at the west end of the beach on February 26, 2018. The other eight wells were handled under the state's SB 44 program from 2020 through 2025. Heal the Ocean was founded in August 1998 by Hillary Hauser and Jeff Young, as Noozhawk has recounted. It has stayed the local organization most closely tied to this work.

Why the pace stays slow

Compare the table with the program's budget. The SB 44 Legacy Wells and Coastal Hazards Program provides up to $2 million a year to deal with legacy wells and coastal hazards and to cut down the oil on Summerland Beach and similar sites. The 2023 Treadwell Pier job cost about $4.65 million, more than two years of that ceiling. The 2025 pair, wells A and B, cost $1.2 million, which fits inside one year's budget.

Cost depends a great deal on where a well sits and how easy it is to reach. Doing two wells that are close together is also cheaper than doing them separately. Heavy equipment has to come onto the sand and leave again, so every job carries a fixed cost before any cement goes in. That's why the next pair was chosen the way it was.

Wells C and D, and the study that picks what comes after

According to the OSPR packet, the Commission expects to plug and abandon wells C and D in early to mid-2027, when the tides favor the work and depending on budget. Well C was seen leaking oil to the shore in February 2026. The two wells are 42 feet apart, so doing them together should cut the cost of moving equipment in and out. Both have been surveyed and mapped, and planning and permitting are underway. The method will probably match the 2025 job: a pipe pile is driven around the well like a sleeve and filled with cement to seal it in.

Two administrative changes make it likely the work will go on past C and D. The SB 44 contract, which was set to expire in June 2025, now runs to June 28, 2028. The Commission also plans to start using blanket licensing for multiple wells, so it can change its plans as new risk data comes in.

Much of that new risk data will come from Heal the Ocean's Summerland Oil Mitigation Study. Working with Bubbleology Research International, the study combines air-emissions readings from two meteorological air quality trailers with seafloor mapping, water chemistry and marine surveys. Edhat reported the August preliminary findings: methane plumes on the seafloor, more faults and fractures than had been mapped before, and links between wells that nobody knew about. Those links matter. If several wells share a path to the surface, sealing the wrong one may do little, and sealing the right one may help more than one spot on the beach.

"SOMS is giving us the ability to connect emissions, geology, and infrastructure so we can identify which legacy wells are actually driving pollution and target abandonment where it can have the greatest benefit," Heal the Ocean Executive Director Karina Johnston said in the Edhat report. The study is funded by the California Ocean Protection Council, the Nora McNeely Hurley Foundation and the Mericos Foundation. It is scheduled to finish in December 2026, and the findings will be made public. Until that report comes out, the August results are only preliminary.

What a work window looks like from Lookout Park

The past jobs give a fair idea of what to expect in 2027. In late 2020, the Commission scheduled the Treadwell 10 and Northstar 815 work to take about two weeks starting around November 1, and it finished on November 29. The Duquesne 910 work was set for December 2 through 7, 2021, with heavy equipment working at low tide and spill-response gear staged in the Lookout Park parking lot. Wells A and B were done between February 22 and 28, 2025, with equipment brought onto the beach by the Finney Street access ramp and the area restored afterward. Each job ran from a few days to a few weeks, scheduled around low tides.

Removing old pilings and debris follows its own calendar. The Commission's 2025 report says that work usually happens between September and March, after the seasonal erosion that exposes buried material. On an ordinary day, the beach is reached by a paved ramp of about an eighth of a mile from the Lookout Park lot.

For tar on a walk, the official guidance is short:

• Skin contact: NOAA advises avoiding tar. If it gets on your skin, wash it off with soap and water, baby oil, or a commonly used safe cleaning paste. Never use solvents, gasoline, kerosene or diesel on skin.
• Unusual amounts: NOAA says unusual numbers of tarballs should be reported to the Coast Guard at 800-424-8802.
• Oil spills: The Office of Spill Prevention and Response takes reports at 800-852-7550, also listed as 800-OILS-911.

Reports matter. Well C was picked for 2027 after it was seen leaking to the shore in February, and the Commission says it chooses wells by the threat they pose, including wells that are leaking or have recently leaked.

On a shoreline that was drilling for oil in the 1890s, a property's history can reach back well past its deed. If you would like to talk through what the shoreline's past means for a property you own or manage, Grubb Campbell Real Estate is glad to help. Schedule a Confidential Consultation.