As Newsom battles big oil, California approves drilling permits for new Central Valley wells

Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to rack up a laundry list of provocations against the state’s oil industry, but the administration’s own oil and gas regulator approved ten new permits for new drilling this month.

The permits for new wells in Kern County mark the first approvals since last summer and the first ones issued by the state’s new oil and gas industry regulator Doug Ito, who heads up the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM).

The permits are for 10 new wells to be drilled by Berry Petroleum in the region’s Midway Sunset oil extraction field. Their approval prompted outcry from climate advocates who say they were not properly vetted by modern environmental standards.

“It’s baffling that the state would green light new drilling in California amid repeated oil spills, dangerously high air pollution and intensifying climate disasters,” said Hollin Kretzmann, attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

In the past eight months since new drilling permits were approved, Newsom pushed for an industry watchdog to investigate possible price gouging at the pump, advocated for a law to plug idle wells seeping methane gas and is now rallying to keep the state’s oil well setback law in place.

In a call with media Thursday to promote new electric truck sales data, the governor cast the fossil fuel industry as a barrier to progress in meeting the state’s lofty climate goals to help stave off the worst effects of warming.

“The barriers are skepticism,” Newsom said in reference to adoption of zero-emission heavy duty vehicles. “The barriers are aided and abetted by the incumbency protection racket, big oil or lobbyists in particular.”

CalGEM and the governor’s office defended the environmental review for the drilling permits, which concluded that a well as deep as 1,200 feet or within 3,600 feet from a home in Derby Acres would not result in environmental impacts.

“The Department of Conservation reviews individual permits on a case-by-case basis and only approves if the permit meets standards set under state laws and regulations and required environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act is complete,” said spokesperson Jacob Roper in a written statement.

Since Newsom signed a law to ban new oil and gas wells near homes and schools in 2022, oil companies poured millions into qualifying a measure on the November ballot to overturn it. The governor is now allied with public health groups, environmentalists and community organizations to defend it.

That campaign is by no means the first time he has publicly taken on oil companies. Newsom called for a special legislative session to look into what he labeled “price gouging,” often declaring that “we can actually beat Big Oil” last year.

He has never gone so far as to use his authority to restrict drilling, but he did set a ban on hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, in motion and has called on the Air Resources Board to phase out oil extraction “no later than 2045.”

Representatives of the industry are quick to point out that new drilling permits have declined sharply in recent years, from thousands of permits per year in 2018 to about 500 permits in 2022, just 24 permits approved in 2023 and now 10 in 2024.

Ten permits for new wells is effectively zero, said Kevin Slagle, spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA).

“The reality in California is we have to produce crude oil under the toughest environmental standards in the world,” he said. “But there’s still a need for our product, and what we don’t produce here we bring in from other parts of the world.”

This story was originally published June 7, 2024 at 1:22 PM with the headline "As Newsom battles big oil, California approves drilling permits for new Central Valley wells."