Bill to ban fracking in state planned
A trio of California lawmakers plans to introduce a bill to ban the controversial fossil fuel drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in an effort to expand the state’s fight against climate change.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco, said he’s working with two other legislators on the matter after Gov. Gavin Newsom embraced a plan this week to phase out new fracking. The details are not yet sorted out, but Wiener told The Chronicle he would like to introduce the bill as soon as lawmakers reconvene in December.
Ideally, he’d like the state to move even faster than the target set by Newsom, who said Wednesday that California should stop issuing new fracking permits by 2024. Wiener wants to ban the practice altogether, as a handful of other states, including New York and Maryland, have done.
“The sooner the better. We’re in a climate emergency,” Wiener said. “We’re approaching the point of no return, and we’re either serious about saving the planet or we’re not. We need to move aggressively away from fossil fuels and phase them out entirely.”
The proposal — which Wiener is working on
with Assemblyman Robert Rivas, DHollister, and Assemblywoman Monique Limón, DSanta Barbara — will focus only on fracking, and would not affect conventional drilling.
Fracking, which involves injecting fluid at high pressure into the ground to loosen natural gas or oil deposits, has long been scrutinized by environmentalists for polluting local water sources and emitting greenhouse gases such as methane, which is far more potent than carbon dioxide, though it does not stay in the atmosphere as long.
Newsom backed an eventual fracking permit ban in an executive order Wednesday that also pledged to phase out the sale of new gaspowered cars in California over the next 15 years. In the order, Newsom said the state “must focus on the impacts of oil extraction” and stop authorizing new fracking operations within four years.
But the governor said he lacked the authority to take that step himself and instead called on the state Legislature to act. It’s not clear if lawmakers have the political support necessary to pass such a measure. Attempts to put a moratorium on fracking have failed in years past, as did a recent bill that would have established buffer space between homes and oil wells.
“Any bill restricting oil production is a hard bill,” Wiener said. “This is a hard issue in the Legislature, and I can’t predict what’s going to happen. What I do know is we have an obligation to our children and our grandchildren to preserve this planet for them.”
Despite California’s wellestablished liberal bona fides and aggressive policies about climate change, the petroleum industry remains a powerful force in the state, particularly in Kern County.
“Dismantling our oil and natural gas industry right now means betting everything on alternative energy resources that we don’t have in place and a supporting infrastructure that’s far from being at the scale we need,” Catherine ReheisBoyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, said in a statement Wednesday.
Senate Republican leader Shannon Grove of Bakersfield has already come out forcefully against the governor’s latest climate change plans, decrying his “extremist policies” and urging him to keep his focus on wildfire prevention through better forest management instead.
Trade unions representing oil industry jobs, such as refinery workers, have also fought recent measures that would have clamped down on fossil fuel production. They are an influential presence at the state Capitol, where organized labor is a key political ally of the Democratic majority.
Limón said she and her colleagues will take the coming months to find an approach that would ensure a just transition away from fracking for consumers and workers — a necessity to secure the votes of lawmakers who represent communities where there is significant oil production.
“Perhaps this is a wonderful environmental goal, but if those other elements aren’t considered, that’s going to be hard for them to support,” she said. “If we are going to move into a world where we see less fossil fuel production, what does that look like?”
A 2015 state study found that fracking accounted for about 20% of oil and gas production in California. New well stimulation permits immediately dropped after the state began regulating fracking more strictly in 2016, according to Kyle Ferrar, the western program coordinator for the FracTracker Alliance, an antifracking group. But permit numbers climbed steadily in recent years until last summer, when the state temporarily stopped issuing new permits while it conducted an audit of its approval process. The moratorium ended in April, and fracking permits were 2% of those issued in the first half of 2020.
“If we don’t stop this potential fracking boom, then that’s going to have a detrimental impact on our climate in the long term,” Rivas said. He noted that the effects are worse for poor communities of color that are closest to oil fields and refineries: “This is an environmental justice issue. If you look at where these productive wells are, there is a disparity in who it impacts.”
Advocates of tougher climate change policies have criticized Newsom for not doing more to crack down on fracking and other forms of fossil fuel extraction sooner, pointing out that permits have actually increased on his watch.
He continued to face some of that criticism after his executive order Wednesday. Alexandra Nagy, California director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch, said in a statement that the order represented “infuriatingly more of the same from Newsom: Lofty words and predictions, but no meaningful action.”
She said the governor must immediately stop permitting new fossil fuel drilling and fracking and implement the buffer zone that lawmakers failed to create.
“Only this would constitute the type of bold action required to protect Californians and our planet,” Nagy said.