SACRAMENTO — California officials have allowed the oil and gas industry to pollute drinking water wells while expanding drilling in recent years, exposing the constant touting of the state as the nation’s “green leader” by state officials and many media outlets as an unsupportable false narrative.
A new report released by the State Water Resources Control Board, entitled “2018 Annual Performance Report: Model Criteria for Groundwater Monitoring in Areas of Oil and Gas Well Stimulation,” documents the presence of oil industry pollutants in water-supply wells in Kern County.
The chemicals detected at elevated levels include arsenic, barium and boron.
“Within the (oil) fields, multiple lines of geochemical evidence indicated overlying groundwater is mixing with oil field fluids,” according to the report. “This result may be expected considering the vertical (less than 140 m) and lateral proximity of sampled wells to oil-bearing formations and production activities.”
The report, released on April 5, 2019, covers the reporting period from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018.
A PDF of the report is available here: www.indybay.org/...
The report also documented a recent increase in hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) near protected groundwater in California.
“Here’s more proof that California’s dirty oil production is polluting our precious groundwater,” said Hollin Kretzmann, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “You’d think the water boards would take immediate action to protect our water from further contamination, but when it comes to the oil industry, they routinely look the other way.”
The preliminary results were part of groundwater monitoring mandated by California Senate Bill 4, dubbed the “green light to fracking bill” by opponents, to determine the effects of fracking on groundwater.
The controversial bill, signed by Governor Jerry Brown in September 2013, was opposed by most conservation and environmental groups, although big environmental NGOs including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the California League of Conservation Voters and the Environmental Defense Fund backed the bill until the very last minute when it was gutted under intense lobbying by the Western States Petroleum Association and Big Oil.
Though the report is unclear on whether the detected pollutants are from fracking operations, there were “multiple lines of geochemical evidence” showing oil-industry contaminants have co-mingled with nearby sources of protected groundwater, said Kretzman.
The water board stated that pollution is “expected” given how close water wells are to oil and gas activities. It also deemed it “likely” that unlined oil-industry wastewater pits caused some of the water pollution.
“California is the only state with significant oil production that allows wastewater to be dumped into unlined pits, and independent scientists have called for the state to phase out this practice. The regional water boards still allow toxic wastewater discharges to continue at hundreds of wastewater pits,” said Kretzman.
The report also revealed that fracking has increased in areas with protected groundwater.” In 2017 oil companies submitted 12 proposed groundwater monitoring plans that, if approved, would allow fracking near valuable groundwater resources. In 2018 that number doubled to 24,” he said.
“Fracking and oil-waste fluids can contain high levels of benzene and other cancer-causing chemicals,” according to Kreutzman. “A 2015 study from the California Council on Science and Technology concluded that fracking in California happens at unusually shallow depths, dangerously close to underground drinking water supplies, with unusually high concentrations of dangerous contaminants. The study also concluded that groundwater monitoring alone is inadequate to protect water and that shallow fracking should be prohibited unless it can be proven safe.”
The report was issued at a time when state regulators are approving big numbers of permits for new oil and gas wells in California. A review of state permitting records in the report “The Sky’s The Limit: California,” shows that more than 21,000 drilling permits for oil and gas wells were issued during the Brown administration. These wells include 238 new offshore wells approved between 2012 and 2016 alone, according to Department of Conservation data analyzed by the Fractracker Alliance: www.fractracker.org/…
What the State Water Resources Control Board report didn't reveal is WHY California regulators have allowed oil companies to pollute water supplies in Kern County for many years. This apparent violation of environmental laws protecting aquifers and the public from oil industry pollution is the direct result of deep regulatory capture in California, from top to bottom.
The most powerful corporate lobbying group in California, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), has topped lobbying spending in California most years. In 2018 the group was the second-highest spender for the year, only trumped by the nearly $10 million spent by PG&E lobbying stateofficials.
WSPA spent $7,874, 807 to influence California government officials in 2018. The powerful association spent all of its money in the 2017-2018 session on general lobbying, with nothing spent on the CPUC. Of the four quarters, WSPA spent its most money lobbying, $2,649,018, in the eighth quarter, from October 1 to December 31, 2018.
The Western States Petroleum Association is led by President Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the former chair of the controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called “marine protected areas” in Southern California.
The total lobbying figures for WSPA in 2018 are below: cal-access.sos.ca.gov/…
SESSION |
QUARTER |
GENERAL LOBBYING |
P.U.C. LOBBYING |
2017-2018 |
8th |
$2,649,018.34 |
$0.00 |
2017-2018 |
7th |
$1,514,828.95 |
$0.00 |
2017-2018 |
6th |
$1,686,014.82 |
$0.00 |
2017-2018 |
5th |
$2,024,947.91 |
$0.00 |
For the entire 2017-2018 Session, WSPA spent a total of $15,768,069.
WSPA represents a who’s who of oil companies, including oil giants BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Shell, Valero and many others. The companies that WSPA represents account for the bulk of petroleum exploration, production, refining, transportation and marketing in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, according to the WSPA website, www.wspa.org.
Chevron and its subsidiaries took third place in the “lobbying competition” in 2018, spending around $4 million on lobbying.
Over the past decade, WSPA and Big Oil have topped the list of spenders on lobbying the Legislature in California. During the 2015-2016 Legislative Session, the oil industry spent a historic $36.1 million to lobby lawmakers and officials in California.
WSPA was the top overall oil industry spender during the 2015-16 session, spending $18.7 million. Chevron, the second overall oil industry spender, spent $7 million in the 2015-16 session.
In 2017, Big Oil also dominated three out of the four top spots of expenditures by all lobbying organizations. Chevron placed first with $8.2 million and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) placed second with $6.2 million. The Tesoro Refining and Marketing Company finished fourth with $3.2 million.
That’s a total of $17.6 million dumped into lobbying by the three top oil industry lobbying organizations alone. That figure exceeds the $14,577,314 expended by all 16 oil lobby organizations in 2016.
In the first six months of 2017, the oil industry spent more on lobbying in California, $16,360,618, than was spent by the industry in all of 2016, $16.0 million.
WSPA and Big Oil wield their power in 6 major ways: through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) serving on and putting shills on regulatory panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups: (5) working in collaboration with media; and (6) contributing to non profit organizations.
Because of this money and the power that Big Oil wields in California, the Jerry Brown administration, in stark contrast with its “green” facade, issued over 21,000 new oil and gas drilling permits in California. That include more than 200 permits for offshore wells in state waters -- wells within 3 miles of the California coast.
In addition, the state of California under Brown — and now under Gavin Newson - controls four times as many offshore oil wells in state waters as Trump’s federal government controls in California. You can view the map showing the location of wells here: http://brownvtrumpoilmap.org.
This money and power also allowed allowed the oil industry to write the cap-and-trade bill, AB 398, that Governor Brown signed in September 2017, as well as to twice defeat a bill to protect a South Coast marine protected area from offshore drilling.
Ironically, the same WSPA president that led the charge to defeat a bill to protect the Vandenberg State Marine Reserve from offshore oil drilling CHAIRED the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create “marine protected areas” on the South Coast.
For more information about WSPA and Big Oil, go to: www.dailykos.com/...