California’s current regulations under AB 2729 have been inadequate to reduce the state’s counts of idle wells. This issue needs to be addressed immediately, before the state of California is exposed to additional economic risk.
Information disclosed in Chevron’s 2023 Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) Form 10-K filed on February 26, 2024, suggests Chevron was hoping to eventually offload its idle wells to a limited liability company to avoid the cost of properly decommissioning its wells in California.
Though a handful of California of oil and gas operators continue to produce profitable volumes of oil, the majority of California operators, including the state’s oil and gas major corporations, Chevron, Aera Energy, and California Resources Corporation, are producing very low average volumes of oil per well.
Assessment shows hundreds of sensitive receptor sites located within 3,200 feet of operational oil and gas wells in California would have been protected if California Senate Bill 1137 had not been challenged by referendum.
A report by FracTracker Alliance finds that more comprehensive bonding requirements are necessary to protect the state of California from being left financially accountable for the plugging and abandonment of tens of thousands of orphaned oil and gas wells.
In Q1 2023, the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) gave out 896 rework permits to oil companies. More than half of these permits were for wells located within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, or healthcare facilities.
This analysis shows that the policy proposed in SB 1137 of denying rework permits within the health protection zones is a commonsense public health intervention that would have minimal effects on production within the protection zone.
During the fourth quarter of 2022, California regulator CalGEM issued oil and gas operators 222 new drilling permits, an increase of over 750% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. Of those, nearly half (100; 47%) were for wells located within the 3,200’ public health setback zone.
FracTracker inspections of oil and gas infrastructure using an optical gas imaging camera found numerous sources of uncontrolled emissions in three California counties.
FracTracker’s in-the-field inspections and updated analysis of CalGEM permit data shows that California’s regulatory practices and permitting policies risk exposing frontline communities to VOCs from oil and gas well sites.
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FracTracker Alliance, 2024