Campaign to protect law limiting oil wells ramps up
Hollywood celebrities joined California’s governor Friday in the launch of a campaign telling the state’s voters to reject a referendum on the November ballot that would overturn a legislative ban on drilling or doing maintenance work on oil wells within 3,200 feet of sensitive sites such as homes and schools.
Against the backdrop of a pumping unit in Los Angeles County’s 1,000-acre Inglewood Oil Field, actors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jane Fonda appeared at a news conference with Gov. Gavin Newsom and environmental activists to denounce the oil industry’s efforts to roll back 2022’s Senate Bill 1137 oil setbacks law.
“Big Oil is the polluting heart of this climate crisis,” Newsom said. “Thank you for being here today, tomorrow, and thank you for being there on Election Day, when we send a powerful message — not just here in the state of California, but heard all across the United States.”
The campaign is gaining steam at a time when the Kern County-centric oil industry is keeping quiet about its own efforts to win over voters since gathering enough signatures to qualify the referendum for November’s general election and thereby stay a law it says would cost local jobs and increase California’s reliance on imported crude.
A USC-led poll in late January found overwhelming support for keeping SB 1137 in place, with only 20% of likely voters surveyed indicating they favor repealing the bill.
Representatives of the referendum’s sponsor, industry trade group California Independent Petroleum Association, declined Friday to answer questions about
what it is doing to earn votes or when its own election campaign might begin.
But CIPA CEO Rock Zierman did take aim at Friday’s event in Inglewood, saying in an email statement speakers there failed to mention the bill’s ban on drilling and well maintenance “means California will import more oil from Saudi Arabia instead of using local energy provided by California workers.”
The battle over SB 1137 has been a bitter fight years in the making that culminated in the final days of Sacramento’s 2022 legislative session. After a more ambitious anti-oil bill failed earlier in the year, Newsom led a gut-and-amend maneuver to pass legislation containing rules his administration had been unable to establish in a rule-making initiative lasting more than three years.
The law was in place for only a short time early last year because, shortly after its passage, the industry succeeded in qualifying the referendum by gathering nearly 1 million signatures in about two months. The petition campaign took criticism for misleading some would-be signers but won certification nonetheless.
The bill has been a major focus of environmental justice advocates, including in Kern County, who say oil industry activity puts the health of nearby residents at risk.
On Friday, Nalleli Cobo, an environmental activist who grew up near an oil well in Los Angeles, said she started experiencing nosebleeds, heart palpitations and headaches as a child and was diagnosed with reproductive cancer at age 19. She has since worked to fight against the health impacts of the oil industry and wants voters to keep the law limiting the location of new oil and gas wells.
“The oil industry has no place in our backyards, in our democracy or in our future,” she said.
Industry representatives say there is no evidence production of oil under California’s strict regulations causes adverse health outcomes. They say nearly all studies on the subject deal with the technique known as fracking, which the Newsom administration no longer permits.
The industry has also said SB 1137 would lead to higher gasoline prices and drain property tax revenues that fund public services in oil-producing communities like Kern.
Besides ending oil and gas drilling, well deepening and reworks within the setback radius, the bill would mandate pollution controls on wells within the setback areas. It would also restrict noise, light and dust while requiring new testing and paperwork.
Newsom signed a law last year that requires top funders pushing a referendum proposal that would overturn state law to be listed on voter information guides released by the state. It also requires a referendum on the ballot to ask voters to “keep the law” or “overturn the law,” a departure from asking them to vote “yes” to keep the law or “no” to block it.