California Regulators Approve More Oil Well Permits Amid a Crisis of Leaking Oil Wells that Should be Plugged

By Kyle Ferrar, MPH/July 29, 2022 / 6 minute read

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Overview

FracTracker’s in-the-field inspections and updated analysis of CalGEM permit data shows that California’s regulatory practices and permitting policies continue to put frontline communities at risk of exposure to degraded air quality from the emissions of VOCs from oil and gas wellsites. Additionally state inspectors have been failing to complete on-site investigations of well sites for leaks and other violations. This article explores the CalGEM permitting data for idle wells in California and discusses the California regulatory practices that have led to many leaking wells throughout the state. The article also includes an interactive map of the 49 leaking wells recently identified by the regulator CalGEM in June 2022.

Permit Tracking

Fractracker Alliance and Consumer Watchdog have updated the maps and figures on NewsomWellWatch.com that track California’s oil and gas well permitting trends. The most updated data for the second quarter of 2022 shows that the California Department of Geological Energy Management (CalGEM) has increased the number of oil and gas well rework permits issued, as compared to the previous year. Many of these wells that are being reworked present an immediate risk of leaks and casing failures, and should therefore be plugged and abandoned rather than reworked. Idle wells have not received the necessary oversight to prevent them from leaking in California, and regulators have not required long-term idle wells to be plugged and properly abandoned. CalGEM Permits for Idle Wells

This quarter’s CalGEM permit tracking update shows that permits for reworking oil and gas wells are up 124% as compared to 2021, see Table 1 below. Rework operations repair issues with oil and gas wells that occur downhole, in the annulus of the wellbore. These types of repairs are sometimes necessary to prevent casing failures and other hazardous issues. Reworks are also sometimes used to improve the flow of oil production out of a well. For both these reasons, reworks can be an option for wells that should otherwise be plugged and properly abandoned. Oil and gas companies, known colloquially as operators, may conduct rework operations to avoid the closure costs associated with plugging a well and remediating the wellsite. In fact, 31% of the wells reworked in 2022 were already idle.

Table 1. Analysis of counts of permits issued by CalGEM for the second quarter of 2022.

Looking a bit deeper into the data, of the 1,400 idle wells that received rework permits from 2019-2021, over 70% of them remain idle today, and only 26% of them are currently active, meaning that the majority are not being reworked in order to resume production. Instead they are being reworked to fix minor issues and to also avoid plugging and closure costs. Additionally, while wellsites are undergoing rework operations they are exempt from California emissions regulations such as the Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards for Crude Oil and Natural Gas Facilities, Subarticle 13 of the California Code of Regulations, Title 17, Division 3, Chapter 1, Subchapter 10 Climate Change, Article 4. This regulation, known as the California oil and gas rule, or the methane rule, is the only regulation for emissions for most neighborhood drill sites. This exemption allows idle wellsites to be serious sources of unregulated air pollution for up to 90 days at a time.

CalGEM Idle Well Inspections

Given the increase in rework permits for idle wells, the recent discovery of 41 leaking idle oil and gas wells in Bakersfield is not surprising. Janet Wilson, the investigative journalist who broke the story on the leaking wells also reports that California’s top oil and gas regulator, CalGEM, instructed inspectors to conduct well inspections remotely from the office, in a bid by management to drive up the reporting of inspection numbers and meet ridiculous quotas of 5,000 inspections per month. Using a practice deemed “remote witnessing,” oil well reviews were done from the office rather than in-person in oil fields. According to Janet Wilson’s reporting:

Frustrated staff at the California Geologic Energy Management Division’s busy inland office say it’s a near-impossible task that likely contributed to the more than 40 wells belatedly discovered leaking methane near two Bakersfield neighborhoods in the past month.

In solidarity with frontline communities, FracTracker Alliance supported a demonstration at CalGEM headquarters on July 13, 2022,organized by VISIÓN and The Last Chance Alliance. Frontline community members and their supporters interrupted the daily operations at the CalGEM office building in Sacramento with a noise demonstration and sit-in, with actors playing the role of inspectors, dressed in business drag and clown paint, sitting behind full sized desks. The demonstration called on CalGEM and Governor Newsom’s administration to establish a 3,200 foot public health setback for new and existing oil wells and to require oil companies to plug existing idle wells. Images and video of the demonstration are shown in Figures 2 and 3 below.

Figure 2. Demonstrators at the California Natural Resources Agency building in downtown Sacramento, home of CalGEM put their feet up and take a load off as they imitate inspectors and other state regulatory policy of conducting “remote witnessing” inspections.

Figure 3. Local news coverage of the demonstration at CalGEM headquarters on Wednesday July 13, 2022.

Filming the Leaking Wells using a FLIR Optical Gas Imaging Camera

In a rapid response to the initial reports of leaking idle wells, FracTracker Alliance visited Bakersfield to conduct its own inspections of the leaking well sites. Armed with a FLIR Teledyne optical gas imaging (OGI) camera and certifications in optical gas imaging field work, FracTracker worked with the Central California Environmental Justice Network to identify and inspect idled and potentially orphaned wells that could be leaking near communities and homes. The map below of Bakersfield shows the locations of the leaking oil wells discovered by CalGEM, as well as the rest of the other 40,000 idle oil and gas wells in the state (nearly 12,000 located within 3,200 feet of a home or community).

CalGEM Leaking Wells in Bakersfield

This interactive map looks at leaking well sites in Bakersfield, California.

In order to turn layers on and off in the map, use the Layers dropdown menu. This tool is only available in Full Screen view.

All data sources are listed in the “Details” section of the map, as well as at the end of this article.

Items will activate in this map dependent on the level of zoom in or out.

View Full Size Map | Updated 7/29/2022 | Map Tutorial

Figure 4. Map of leaking oil wells discovered near Bakersfield, CA. CalGEM has hired contractors to fix these leaks and the majority are now fixed. It is unclear how many more leaking wells still exist.

FracTracker Alliance’s own field inspections in Bakersfield yielded the discoveries of several additional leaking wells, which were reported to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. Additionally, field observations and discussions with CalGEM inspectors in the field indicated that CalGEM and the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District were engaged in a region wide review of idle wellsites. CalGEM reported that the regulator had hired contractors to fix leaks and conduct maintenance on wells, since regulations do not currently exist to address these leaking wells or require their operators to fix the leaks. These wells fall through a regulatory loophole.

Distinct signs of maintenance were documented for the majority of wells visited during the site visits. Some images showing the maintenance are shown below in Figures 5 and 6. New stainless steel caps were installed covering drain pipes, new pressure gauges were installed on almost every well visited, and fresh teflon tape and pipe dope was applied to threaded connections. Regardless of the maintenance, multiple leaks were detected in downtown Bakersfield, from wells next to commercial office buildings and in public parks. Without consistent maintenance and vigilant oversight, California’s idle wells will continue to degrade and these wells will be leaking once more.

Figure 5. Image showing maintenance work conducted on and idle well in East Bakersfield. The red rings show the new equipment installed on the wellhead.

Figure 6. Images showing a leaking well in downtown Bakersfield, including a still taken with the OGI camera showing the detected leak.

Illegally Permitted Emissions from Oil Wells

Aaron Cantu, investigative journalist for Capital and Main, recently reported that the Central Valley’s air district illegally permitted numerous methane and VOC emissions sources in this same region as the leaking wells. In this case, oil companies were granted phony emissions credits that allowed them to emit toxic and carcinogenic VOCs. FracTracker Alliance and Earthwork’s Community Empowerment Project thermographer Andrew Klooster joined Mr. Cantu in the oil fields of Kern County to investigate these sites. Again, the use of an OGI FLIR camera allowed for the visualization of VOC and methane emissions from these illegally permitted sources.

As a result of this corruption coming to light, Mr. Cantu also reports that multiple researchers serving as community liaisons to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District’s Emission Reduction Credit Public Advisory Workgroup have resigned in protest. According to Mr. Cantu’s article in Capital and Main:

In a letter sent this morning to Samir Sheikh, the air district’s manager, and regulators at both the California Air Resources Board and the EPA Region 9 office in San Francisco, the members who stepped down expressed frustration with the district’s approach. “As representatives of the public, we can no longer be party to a sham process that gives the appearance of addressing systemic problems while sidestepping accountability,” they wrote. “We are gravely disappointed in the lack of constructive dialogue and substantive outcomes despite the [public advisory work group] being convened for almost 2 years.”

“Rather than addressing concerns raised by public representatives of the [public advisory work group], or resolving outstanding issues from the California Air Resources Board’s 2020 program review, meetings have mainly consisted of redundant technical information about potential avenues for issuing additional credits,” the signatories wrote.

Conclusion

It is clear that CalGEM largely dropped the ball on this issue and, as a result, communities are at risk of exposure to toxic and carcinogenic air pollutants. Rather than approving rework permits to keep aging and corroding wells operationally idle, CalGEM must require oil and gas operators to properly plug and abandon these wells and remediate the wellsites. Additionally, CalGEM should not be permitting new oil and gas wells, particularly near homes and communities. FracTracker Alliance urges Governor Newsom to require operators to plug and abandon these existing wells and to institute a 3,200’ public health setback to keep future extraction and leaks from oil and gas wells and infrastructure away from people, homes, and communities.

Topics in This Article:

Air, Health & Safety, Legislation & Politics, Wells

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