Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
California Sen. Monique Limón wrote a state bill to ban hydraulic fracking and other oil extraction methods that pose risks to the environment and public health.
Last week Sen. Limón and Sen. Scott Wiener introduced Senate Bill 467, which halts the issuance or renewal of permits for hydraulic fracturing (fracking), acid well stimulation treatments, cyclic steaming, and water and steam flooding starting January 1, 2022, and then prohibits these extraction methods entirely starting January 1, 2027.
SB 467 will also prohibit all new or renewed permits for oil and gas extraction within 2,500 feet of any homes, schools, healthcare facilities, or long-term care institutions such as dormitories or prisons, by January 1, 2022. The bill cites that oil extraction near people is extremely harmful to people’s health and overwhelmingly occurs near low-income and minority neighborhoods, causing significant negative health impacts.
“These production and extraction methods have been shown to pose significant risks to the environment and public health, particularly when conducted within 2,500 feet of human activity. The legislation also contains provisions to facilitate a transition of oil workers to jobs in well remediation and sealing,” according to a press release from Sen. Wiener’s office.
The bill states only 5-15% of oil is recoverable when an oil or gas well is drilled without using additional production and extraction methods. These methods can include hydraulic fracturing, acid well stimulation treatments, cyclic steam operations, and water and steam flooding. The impacts of these methods can cause an increase in earthquakes and sinkholes, water contamination, and oil spills. They also can cause serious and life-threatening complications to surrounding communities.
“Climate change is not a theoretical future threat — it’s an existential threat to our community and is having devastating impacts right now,” said Sen. Wiener. “We have no time to waste, and California must lead on climate action, including transitioning to a 100% clean energy economy.”
Due to climate change, California has experienced years of extreme drought and water shortages. In 2014 in California, with hydraulic fracturing alone, oil producers used nearly 70 million gallons of water. Additionally, water used for enhanced oil extraction is likely to never re-enter the usable water supply due to the levels of contamination these practices cause, according to a press release.
“As I often say, ‘if there’s not a bill, there’s not a conversation,’ and it is necessary to have these conversations at the state level about environmental impacts and public health as oil production continues near our homes and schools. This bill continues robust policy conversations on fossil fuels and alternative energy production that have been going on for decades,” said Sen. Limón.
“What this bill aims to do is simple: protect people’s drinking water and air from risky oil extraction while providing a piece of the just transition puzzle for affected workers,” said Tara Messing, Staff Attorney for the Environmental Defense Center. “This bill is focused on the most extreme and dangerous forms of unconventional oil production. Last year, the Governor signaled it was time to stop this type of oil development and the legislature has now come up with a solution. This bill would not only be a win for our environment and climate, but also for the health of our communities.”
The full bill can be read here.
Cmon Pitmix we’re waiting…
good. ban it. time to drink something else….fossil fuel is outdated and at this point….it’s not helping anything
ZERO – Do you walk to work (if employed); and to the grocery store?
Or use a computer made of plastic? What is your keyboard made out of? Any plastic parts in your phone?
Conservativesb: Yeah! Stand up for plastic! The forever garbage that is filling the oceans and environment as fast as the Chinese can stamp it and we can break it and throw it away. Archeologists in a few thousand years (if we’re still around) will think we walked around drinking mini vodka bottles and eating junk all day. Not to far off though, lol.
Whoo boy, the fossil fuel lovers are going to have fun with this one. I’d be more sympathetic to their arguments if the oil industry would agree to pay an extraction tax in CA like they do in every other state in the disunion.
I am a fossil fuel lover. But I ask this question respectfully. Would you want a decrease or removal of state income tax or property tax as in many other states who have severance tax?
PITMIX
Is this the tax for oil production that CA Doesnt pay?
Tax Type: CA. Oil and Gas Production Assessment
$0.5038349 on each barrel of oil and 10,000 cubic feet of natural gas produced. Rate established annually each June. Ad valorem taxes administered by county.
Ignorant past? We’d still be in the middle ages without fossil fuels.
The point is that we’re headed for worse than the Middle Ages if we keep using them. Are you still prescribing leeches for headaches?
I used the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s most recent long-term forecasts for the number of new electric vehicles through 2050, estimated how much electricity they’d use, and then figured out how much pollution that electricity would generate, looking at three key pollutants regulated under the U.S. Clean Air Act—sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), and particulates—as well as CO2 emissions. I compared them to the emissions of new gasoline-powered vehicles, using the EIA’s “real world” miles-per-gallon forecast, rather than the higher CAFE standard values.
What I found is that widespread adoption of electric vehicles nationwide will likely increase air pollution compared with new internal combustion vehicles. You read that right: more electric cars and trucks will mean more pollution. (JONATHAN LESSER)
Doulie, actually i ride my bike to work and have done so for about 10 years. Try again dude. Weekends, i run, walk, skateboard, bike with my dog. Grocery runs, the other bike with a basket. Do I drive? As little as I can in town. I drive to leave town. My truck is also about 20 years old. You’re picking a fight with someone who doesn’t care at ALL about fossil fuel, gas prices, oil, etc. Once this truck dies, I’m replacing it with a sailboat. Would you care to pick on that next? Go for it.
Facts don’t matter Fishnsurfn, pushing against oil goes over well with the constituents so that’s what the politicians will do. Rarely do they look at the real world effect of their legislative actions beyond how well it will go over in their next election. Like the new EV only cars by 2035, it is merely a “feel good” mandate for re-election material and useless without simultanestouly putting a plan in place to be able to reliably generate all that carbon neutral electricity required for those EV’s (and to replace all the natural gas hookups that are being banned).
Fishnsurfn. Yup. They will figure all that out after the fact and ban electric vehicles too. Curious to know you have done any studies on the effects of all those batteries, production and disposal? Or is that included in your findings?
It’s interesting that your calculations go against almost all published data on that comparison. (and I do hope that you recalculated the grid makeup over time to account for more renewables too) Most reports and life cycle assessments cite that where EV’s compare negatively is in human and environmental toxicity – primarily from mining and refining the materials used in the batteries.
A lot of debatable assertions in the press release, but apart from that, I’d like to know more about transitioning oil and gas workers. I can’t imagine well-remediation and sealing jobs might pay $100K/year, apart from the managers of such projects. Love to hear more about that. This sounds like the national campaign against fossil fuels that asserts clean energy will generate ‘millions of high-paying jobs.’ I can’t yet see how that is possible, given most of the current jobs in that sector are mechanical installation and maintenance. Happy to hear more details about how this will happen.
Fossil fuels are a dying technology of our ignorant past.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/new-study-a-zero-emissions-us-is-now-pretty-cheap/
https://www.wunderground.com/video/top-stories/fossil-fuels-killed-more-than-8-million-globally-in-2018-study-finds