Governor Jerry Brown wants more oil drilling—he fired two top officials when they slowed the state permit process—and now he’s got it.

The state Department of Conservation increased the number of exemptions to the landmark California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) six-fold, to 19, in the months following Brown’s firing of the acting department director and the head of its Division of Gas, Oil, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) last November. The governor accused them of thwarting his efforts at speeding up the drilling process.

CEQA requires public agencies to consider the environmental impact of any projects before signing off on them, but has more than 30 classes of exemptions. According to the Los Angeles Times, the state usually cites a CEQA provision that if there were only a “minor alteration to land,” awarding an exemption would be justified.

Brown told a news conference in August, “I've never seen a CEQA exemption I didn't like.”

The fight over drilling has unfolded against a backdrop of national debate over hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, a process that injects hundreds of thousands of gallons of pressurized water, mixed with toxic chemicals, into wells, fracturing the rock formation and forcing oil or gas out of the ground.

Fracking is virtually unregulated in California. The state doesn’t know how often energy companies use it to drill or what chemicals are being injected into the ground. Critics say fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination, air pollution, releases of methane gas, micro-earthquakes and sink holes.

Sixteen CEQA drilling exemptions were awarded in Kern County, the state’s largest oil-producing county and no stranger to oil-related environmental disasters. In 1910, the Lakeview Gusher sent a column of sand and oil 20 feet in diameter 200 feet into the air, spewing out 9 million barrels of oil over 18 months and forming a lake of crude people could boat across. The spectacular eruption ended when the well collapsed in on itself.    

Despite that disaster and others, Kern County has historically exhibited little control over oil drilling. An “unrestricted drilling” ordinance in 1957 formally declared that farming and oil exploration were compatible uses of the land.

–Ken Broder  

To Learn More:

Kern County Farmers Take on Oil Industry, California (by Michael J. Mishak, Los Angeles Times)

The Colonization of Kern County (by Jeremy Miller, Orion Magazine)

Sierra Club Sues State over Approval of Oil Project in Kern Vineyard (by John Cox, The Bakersfield Californian)

Environmentalists Sue State over Letting Drillers Frack without Oversight (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)