Oil future

California's oil future goes to court

By COLBY BERMEL and ALEXANDER NIEVES

The future of oil production in California could hinge on one court hearing this week in Bakersfield.

A whopping 80 percent of the state’s oil comes from Kern County, and the sector has made some powerful allies in local government. In 2015, county officials tried to fast-track tens of thousands of new wells over a 25-year-period — using a single environmental study for all of them.

Environmentalists sued, and the courts ruled the county’s sweeping ordinance — which industry groups had helped to write —violated state environmental law.

So county officials wrote a new one.

The legality of that new ordinance — which environmentalists were also quick to challenge — is the subject of Thursday’s hearing in Kern County Superior Court.

Aside from the pollution-producing and planet-warming impacts of continued drilling, environmentalists are looking to see what role the state will play as the county's situation is sorted out.

The case highlights an arrangement in Kern County that environmentalists have criticized: the county, rather than the state, approves permits within its borders. 

If the judge rules against Kern, the county will likely be instructed to go back to the drawing board for the second time — and, possibly, resume its practice approving the wells on an individual basis. It could also mean restoring a more active role for state regulators.

California’s oil and gas regulator, the California Geologic Energy Management Division, walks a fine line between its two most vocal constituencies: drillers and environmentalists. By allowing Kern officials to make the bulk of the state’s permitting decisions, CalGEM avoids some of the heat that comes with such calls.

But this logic has also alienated environmental advocates.

The division is "passing the buck because no one wants to do anything to upset industry or environmental groups," said Kyle Ferrar, Western program coordinator at FracTracker Alliance. "They're trying to find some type of compromise, which in this case means making it someone else's fault that these wells are going to be approved or aren't going to be approved."