Local Actions and Local Regulations in California

By Kyle Ferrar, CA Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

The potential for large scale oil development in the Monterey and other shale basins has raised concern in California communities over the use of hydraulic fracturing and other unconventional well stimulation techniques, such as acidizing.  The fact that DOGGR was not tracking the use of these techniques, much less regulating them, has led to a variety of actions being taken by local governments.  Several groups including county directors, city councils, and neighborhood and community councils have passed resolutions supporting state-wide bans on hydraulic fracturing and other controversial stimulation techniques.  As can be seen in the following map, several of them are located within the greater LA metropolitan area, which is currently considering a local moratorium.

This map shows the local civic groups [green check marks] in the LA metropolitan area that have passed resolutions supporting statewide bans/moratoriums on hydraulic fracturing and other controversial stimulation activities. Click on the map to view larger image.

Two local jurisdictions, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the County of Santa Barbara, have enacted their own measures to regulate oil and gas development.  Both require notification of drilling techniques, and Santa Barbara County requires operators to file for a unique permit when using hydraulic fracturing. Data from the county of Santa Barbara’s permitting program was not readily accessible – although it may well be that they have not issued any permits.  The South Coast Air Quality Management District is charged with managing the air quality for Orange County, the city of Los Angeles and the surrounding urban centers of Riverside and San Bernardino.  In the spring of 2013, the SCAQMD passed Southern California rule 1148.2.  The rule requires oil operators to submit specific reports of well activity documenting drilling, chemical use and the well stimulation techniques employed, directly to the SCAQMD.  Reportable methods include acidification, gravel packing, and hydraulic fracturing.  The rule was implemented June 2, 2013. The database of well-site data is readily accessible via the web.  Web users can obtain individual well summaries of drilling activity and chemical-use reports, or download the full data sets.  The site is user-friendly and the data is easily accessible. Unfortunately, the currently available data set is missing some of the most important information, specifically well API numbers – the unique identifier for all wells drilled in the United States.  This data gap makes it impossible to compare or cross-reference this data set with others.

FracTracker has mapped the well-sites reported on the SCAQMD in the new map on the California page titled California Local Actions, Monitoring and Regulations.  This map outlines the boundaries of SCAQMD and other sub-state regulatory agencies that have elected to manage the drilling activity.  Details on the programs are provided in the map layers.  The data published by the SCAQMD has been included in the map.  In the map above, if you compare the SCAQMD data layer to the Hydraulically Fractured dataset derived by combining DOGGR and FracFocus data, you can see that the two data sets do not look to include the same well sites.  Unfortunately, it cannot be known whether this is merely an issue of slightly dissimilar coordinates or legitimate data gaps; the SCAQMD data set lacks the API identifier for the majority of well sites reported.  Because the regulatory landscape tends to follow the political leadership that reflects the interests of the constituency, legislative districts have also been included as a viewable map layer.   Be active in your democracy.