Ten days after the Santa Barbara oil spill, President Nixon imposed a moratorium on all drilling and production from offshore rigs in California waters. It wasn't until April that limited activity resumed, with only five of the seventy-two leases allowed to restart drilling or production. While the Santa Barbara disaster and the resulting regulatory changes had little effect on onshore production, their long-term impact on offshore production was significant. By 1981, offshore production levels had fallen to two-thirds of their peak just a decade earlier.
The effects extended beyond California, as U.S. oil production steadily declined from its 1970 peak of 10.04 million barrels per day (mbpd) to a low of 3.97 mbpd in September 2008—the lowest production level since April 1943. It wasn't until winter of 2008 that U.S. oil production began to gradually recover.
