The legislature introduced a slough of Budget Trailer Bills (TBL) including the Public Resources Trailer Bill, which is SB 178, authored by the Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review.
This catch-all bill related to implementing the state budget on all matters related to public resources will be reviewed and approved by the legislature before the close of this year’s legislative session on Saturday, August 31st.
The silver lining in the dark storm cloud that is SB 1137 is the natural implementation delays that such a sweeping bill requires. CalGEM and industry cannot snap their collective fingers and magically turn SB 1137 into a workable law. Even though SB 1137 was rammed through the Legislature with only 3 days left in the 2022 Legislative Session, it is far more complicated to implement a bill. It is a time-consuming process for the state and for operators.
Despite the normal process for implementing new laws, the environmental community and the original author of SB 1137 are expressing frustration that the entire bill cannot take effect immediately. This article by Julie Cart, Environmental Reporter for CalMatters, noted that the Newsom administration on Wednesday proposed amendments to a budget trailer bill that would delay oil industry deadlines for various parts of the regulations, ranging from 12 to 54 months.
By way of review, in 2022 the Legislature enacted a law that banned new oil drilling within 3,200 feet of residential areas and required safety measures at existing wells, including leak detection and noise controls—both of which are already required of oil producers. CIPA then launched a campaign to overturn it by collecting signatures to create a ballot measure. The industry successfully qualified the referendum and put SB 1137 on ice for two years.
Now that CIPA has pulled the referendum from the ballot, it is incumbent upon the Legislature to draft enacting language in the budget, via the trailer bill process. Reality is not easy to swallow for Senator Lena Gonzalez, who authored SB 1137 despite her district being home to a massive amount of critical California oil production which is completely safe for both residents and the environment.
According to CalMatters, Senator Gonzalez said she would not vote for the bill in its current form, even though it is CalGEM that needs the proper amount of time to efficiently and accurately carry out the new law. “It is very frustrating,” Gonzalez said. “There has been so much work put into this. We owe it to these communities to stick to our word.” What Senator Gonzalez seems to miss is that when a bill becomes law, it takes time for the state department responsible for implementation to get it right.
The good news is that the oil wells in urban Los Angeles continue to operate safely for all humans and the environment and pose little to no threat to anyone or anything. Oil wells are not a concern of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which noted in a 2019 study that the top polluter of the LA Basin is the increased number of oil supertankers clogging the ports in LA and San Francisco.
Still, extremist groups continue to howl at the moon about oil wells being a problem. “This is a major change — doubling the amount of time industry has to comply with major health implications. It’s not just an adjustment,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute for the nonprofit environmental group Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s indefensible. It is a huge gift to big oil, and we need our agencies to protect the public rather than big oil.”
CIPA CEO Rock Zierman said the delays made sense because the ballot proposition process paused the implementation, so a new starting point is necessary. Zierman pointed out that the law’s main focus, developing the setback requirement and prohibiting new wells or work on existing wells within the buffer zone, is already in place.
Even though Senator Gonzalez and the extremist groups that influence her are stomping mad, they need to accept reality and trust the very administration that got SB 1137 through the legislature. Haters of the oil industry will not be satisfied until the entire oil industry in the state is dead and gone and the state is 100 percent dependent on foreign crude oil.