A judge must decide whether to let a controversial oil drilling project proceed.

The ground under Hames Valley in South Monterey County is estimated to contain hundreds of millions of barrels of recoverable oil. Trio Petroleum has spent millions of dollars to assess the geology and produce that estimate.

But in arguing before Monterey County Superior Court Judge Susan Matcham on May 13, attorneys representing the Bakersfield-based oil company and the county downplayed the potential for commercial production.

“The evidence in the record is that in this area, there has been no commercially viable amounts of oil recovered,” Deputy County Counsel Robert Shaw said.

Trio was in court to fend off a lawsuit filed last year by the Center for Biological Diversity that claims a full environmental study should be conducted before the company is allowed to drill four exploratory wells on grazing land. Monterey County is a defendant because the Board of Supervisors approved the permit, on appeal after a Planning Commission denial.

Hollin Kretzmann, a lawyer for CBD, said that Trio is trying to skirt regulations by “artificially chopping up the project into different phases.” The potential impacts of exploration and production should be considered at the same time, he said.

Trio’s argument is that without the test wells, gaps in data would make it too difficult to anticipate impacts of a large-scale oil drilling.

If the judge rules in Trio’s favor, the project could become the first oil and gas project in Monterey County since voters passed Measure Z in 2016. Measure Z banned fracking, wastewater injection and new oil wells in the county, but the oil industry and royalty owners sued and got a judge to overturn all but the fracking prohibition. That case is on appeal; a court date is pending.