Maybe California Needs to Shut Down All of its Oil Drilling Operations
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pproximately 2.1 million people in California live within half a mile of an oil or gas well, according to a 2020 analysis by FracTracker Alliance. This nonprofit organization collects data on the health consequences of oil and gas development. Californian’s well fields are primarily located in residential neighborhoods. California produces an upward of 140 million barrels of oil every year. Unfortunately, even with California being a leading oil producer, there are no buffer zones to protect residents from oil gas and extraction. Considering that the state’s oilfields are primarily old and their wells outdated, they require a lot of high-tech to drill, resulting from toxic chemicals. Unlike rural oil-producing states, where oil fields are uninhabited save for the miners working on them, California’s Kern County produces 70 percent of the state’s oil, and pump jacks are seen hovering over the elementary school in Shafter. And to the South near Long Beach, drilling rigs silhouette the playing fields. On top of that, Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay area’s refineries, located in neighborhoods, handle the dirtiest oil in the world—from Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands to its very own carbon-heavy crude oil. A situation that is only getting worse, between 2015 to 2020, California issued
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more than 25,000 permits for drilling new wells and redrilling older ones, with more than 60 percent of them in Spanish-speaking communities. Last month, an underwater pipeline leaked for several days, covering the coast for miles in sticky oil. As of last month, the oil had infiltrated a crucial coastal wetland habitat in Huntington Beach, dispersing the oil even further to the south. Scientific research has documented the health problems exposed to people living near these neighborhoods. A 2012 study done by the University of Colorado found that people who lived within a mile of a fracking site had a higher risk of developing cancer. The study pointed to the exposure of Benzene, a known carcinogenic detected near oil facilities. In a separate study in California, a connection was found between exposure to oil and gas well sites and spontaneous preterm birth. In yet another study published last year, researchers looked at birth records from 2006 to 2015 in rural California. They linked low-birthweight babies and other adverse birth outcomes with proximity to oil and gas wells. The state of California for years has been in the business of promoting rather than managing oil production- Something that was revealed in an investigative report done in 2019. A report that showed that leaders
THE POWER IS NOW MAGAZINE | DECEMBER 2021
