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Oil industry challenges California health and safety setbacks law with referendum [1]
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Date: 2022-09-22
It didn’t take long for the oil industry to challenge Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing into law SB 1137, the bill that mandates 3200 foot health and safety setbacks between new and reworked oil wells and homes, schools, hospitals, day care centers and other facilities.
Just 3 days after a bill signing ceremony on Friday, September 16, in Vallejo where California Governor Gavin Newsom made good on his promise to mandate the buffer zones between oil drilling and communities, the powerful oil industry in California launched a campaign to undo the state’s long-fought for buffer zones, according to the Last Chance Alliance.
On Monday, oil and gas industry insider Jerome Reedy, a board member of the California Independent Petroleum Association and treasurer of the California Natural Gas Producers Association, filed a referendum with the California Attorney General's office to reverse SB 1137.
The link to the filing is here: oag.ca.gov/…
According to the filing:
“This bill would prohibit, commencing January 1, 2023, the division (CalGEM) from approving any notice of intention within a health protection zone, as defined, except for reasons related to preventing or responding to a threat to public health, safety, or the environment, complying with a court order, or to plug and abandon or reabandon a well, as provided. The bill would also explicitly authorize the division to approve notices of intention to public and private entities who own, purchase, or lease land containing idle-deserted or previously plugged and abandoned wells for the purposes of those public and private entities plugging and abandoning, or replugging and abandoning, those oil and gas wells so development of nonfossil fuel production and injection and related uses can proceed, as provided. The bill would require an operator who submits a notice of intention, except for certain notices of intention, to also submit either a sensitive receptor inventory and map of the area within the 3,200 feet radius of the wellhead or proposed wellhead location to the division, or a statement certifying that the operator has confirmed that there are no sensitive receptors, as defined, located within 3,200-foot of the wellhead location, as provided. If a notice of intention is approved pursuant to compliance with a court order, the bill would require the operator of the oil or gas well to provide an individual indemnity bond sufficient to pay the full cost of properly plugging and abandoning the operator's well or wells, and decommissioning any attendant production facilities in the health protection zone, as provided.”
The initiative was filed by Nielsen Merksamer, a law and lobbying firm that works with all of the major oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, and Phillips 66, as well as a number of oil industry coalitions and front groups, including California Carbon Capture Coalition, Californians for Energy Independence, and the California Labor Oil Management Alliance, the Last Chance Alliance noted.
Yesterday, during a fireside chat with the Clinton Global Initiative at NYC Climate Week, Gov. Newsom stated:
“These entrenched interests—we may be dominated by Democrats [in California] but many of us are wholly owned subsidiaries of the fossil fuel industry. I mean they play hard. We did a 3200-foot setback bill for health and safety and they just filed a referendum yesterday. Big Oil–these guys aren't going away,”
Gov. Newsom committed to enacting a 3,200-foot setback separating homes, schools and parks from industrial fossil fuel operations last October although two similar bills had previously failed in the legislature. The Alliance said Newsom visited the Capitol with a plea to Democrats in both houses to pass setbacks as part of his top five climate priorities for the state.
Newsom confirmed this during his remarks yesterday:
“I had to jam my own Democratic legislature in the last few weeks of our session to get four critical bills of the 40 climate bills done... had I not done that all of those special interests would have prevailed again to deny and delay.”
The Attorney General’s office has 10 days to prepare the circulating title and summary for the referendum. Proponents will then have 90 days to gather the required number of valid petitions, giving them a deadline of approximately December 15. This would be potentially the 8th proposition on California’s 2024 ballot.
Woody Little, the interim campaign lead at the Last Chance Alliance, responded to the challenge by the oil industry in a tweet on September 20:
“Just three days after @GavinNewsom signed a landmark climate package, a CIPA (CA oil) board member tries to overturn a key plank: #SB1137, the setbacks bill. While Newsom is at NY Climate Week no less.Outrageous attack on CA's #climateleadership. New heights of #PolluterGreed.”
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