“We’re not being allowed to do what we do best for what California needs most — local oil,” says Taft Mayor Dave Noerr, standing in an oil field in the city. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
By Louis Sahagún Washington Post
TAFT, Calif. — Here amid the dusty hills and deserted main streets of California’s oil country, the last three years have delivered “one kick in the gut after another,” some say.
The coronavirus, wildly fluctuating crude prices, lingering surface spills, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pledge to transition to a “carbon-neutral” economy, and the recent closure of two local prisons have left many wondering just what the future has to offer in this sere corner of western Kern County.
In recent days, however, that grim outlook has given way to a potent mix of hope, anger and desperation following President Biden’s ban on the importation of Russian oil.
The executive order, which is intended to undermine President Vladimir Putin’s ability to wage war in Ukraine, has contributed to soaring gasoline prices. It has also given oil industry advocates a new cudgel with which to fight California’s pumping restrictions.
“We’re ready to meet this God-given opportunity with expertise and a critical natural resource we’ve got plenty of,” said Dave Noerr, mayor of Taft and a veteran oilman. “But we’re not being allowed to do what we do best for what California needs most — local oil.”
In the fields surrounding such historic oil centers as Taft and McKittrick, a labyrinth of steam pipes, fuel lines, diesel power generators, and dirt roads weave amid countless pump jacks. The air here smells like crankcase oil — as it has for decades — but there is far less activity now than there was just three years ago, and local communities are feeling the pinch.
State oil and gas regulators have denied most new permits to use hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, and similar extraction technologies since 2019, when Newsom began calling for plans to phase out oil production in California, citing the increasingly harmful effects of global warming.
His actions raised ire in petroleum company boardrooms, enraged Kern County officials, and left small-town governments at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley grappling with shrinking tax rolls.
Newsom has since been named a defendant in lawsuits filed by Kern County and the Western States Petroleum Assn., which accuse him of causing “irreparable harm” to roughly 23,900 people who, directly or indirectly, depend on Kern County’s 76 active oil fields to earn a living. The lawsuits want a judge to declare that his actions are “are null and void and exceed the bounds of the law.”
But now, some see the Russian oil ban as their last, best hope of forcing the state to expand production.
State and federal lawmakers backed by the oil industry have spent the last week pounding Newsom’s anti-oil stance.
Read the full story here
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