A8 FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019 WST S LATIMES.COM
to them tooth and nail.”
Smith, like many others
in McKittrick, was more
worried about how the larg-
est California spill in nearly
three decades would affect
election campaigns and new
oil industry legislation in
Congress and the state
Legislature.
When Gov. Gavin New-
som, who has taken a more
anti-oil stance than his pred-
ecessor, former Gov. Jerry
Brown, ventured to the spill
site for a firsthand look
Wednesday, the sarcastic re-
sponse heard across town
was, “There goes the neigh-
borhood.”
But the future of Califor-
nia’s billion-dollar oil indus-
try was already being
shaped by shifting political
winds, building concerns
about toxic emissions from
oil and natural gas produc-
tion, development of alter-
native energy facilities and a
recent overhaul of the Cali-
fornia Division of Oil, Gas
and Geothermal Resources,
or DOGGR, the state’s pri-
mary oil regulatory agency.
“California can put a stop
to the inevitability of oil
spills by intentionally transi-
tioning away from oil extrac-
tion,” said Kathryn Phillips,
director of Sierra Club Cali-
fornia. “The state must pri-
oritize our public health and
our environment over corpo-
rate polluters’ profits.”
That kind of talk raises
hackles in the southern end
of the San Joaquin Valley,
where oil is an economic and
cultural force crucial to the
lives of thousands of people.
When retiree Raul Rubio,
67, wants to relax, he leans
back in a folding chair in his
backyard facing an oil field
that is miles long and miles
wide. The scenery is perfect
for sifting through memo-
ries of the 40 years he worked
as an oil field operator.
An odd sort of duality
permeates his feelings about
the ongoing oil spill roughly
3½ miles from his modest
wood-framed home.
On one hand, he can re-
call many industrial acci-
dents over the years that
could have had potentially
devastating consequence.
But he also appreciates the
simpler, old-fashioned,
slower pace of life.
About 12 years ago, a
Cymric well blasted a mix-
ture of oil and water so high
that it traveled for miles in
the wind. Gooey spots cov-
ered the town straddling a
lonely stretch of Highway 33
like leopard spots.
“Chevron immediatelytook responsibility and
fixed that well,” he recalled
with a smile. “They also
paid to clean our cars and
property.”
Around the same time,
while making the rounds of
another local oil field, he
said: “I discovered an oil spill
that spilled into a ravine and
then flowed for miles. That
problem also got fixed right
away.”
So, he wasn’t all that wor-
ried about the ongoing leak
at Cymric field.
“I know that Chevron is
out there cleaning things
up,” he said. “They know
what they’re doing. If it was a
danger to the people living
here, they would have noti-
fied us.”
Skepticism runs deep
here when it comes to envi-
ronmentalists’ warnings
about the dangers posed by
oil production and an array
of unconventional oil and
natural gas extraction tech-
niques and their hazardous
byproducts on wildlife, air
quality, drinking water in
underground aquifers and
global climate change.
Don’t believe it. Not a
chance. Life is as safe and
peaceful as it always has
been, locals like to say.
But anti-oil forces aren’t
waiting before some of the
potential long-lasting im-
pacts from oil wells become
evident.
In a state where 5.5 mil-
lion people live within a mile
of an oil well, the Legislature
is currently weighing the
merits of Assembly Bill 345,
which would create 2,500-
foot health and safety buffer
zones between new oil and
gas wells and sensitive land
uses including schools,
homes and hospitals.
The bill, written by As-
semblyman Al Muratsuchi
(D-Rolling Hills Estates),
was inspired, in part, by a
Kern County Superior Court
ruling in May that the city of
Arvin had illegally approved
four new wells adjacent to
homes and farms already
coping with 10 active gas and
oil wells, some of them in ag-
ricultural fields.“This case sends a really
strong signal that the oil in-
dustry cannot just do what-
ever it wants — it must follow
California’s environmental
laws,” said Chelsea Tu,
senior attorney at the Cen-
ter on Race, Poverty & the
Environment.
Separately, Newsom in
June signed a state budget
that earmarked $1.5 million
for an unprecedented study
to find ways to reduce Cali-
fornia’s petroleum produc-
tion and demand.
A few days later, he fired
DOGGR Supervisor Ken
Harris for issuing too many
permits for hydraulic frac-
turing, or fracking, and alle-
gations that several of his
regulators own stock in ma-
jor oil companies.
On his first day on the
job, Jason Marshall, who
was appointed acting super-
visor at DOGGR, ordered
Chevron to “take all mea-
sures” to stop the seepage at
the Cymric field that has
continued intermittently for
more than two months.
He’s been frustrated by
an inability to get clear an-
swers to some basic ques-tions: Why hasn’t the leak
been stopped? Why did
Chevron and state regula-
tors wait two months to
formally alert the public
about the problem that be-
gan May 10?
In an interview, Richard
Hinkley, general manager in
Chevron’s asset devel-
opment business, said he be-
lieves that the seepage
started after crews used ce-
ment to fortify a dormant
well that in 2004 had been
taken out of commission
and permanently sealed.
Built-up pressure from
an oil reservoir under the
well, he said, forced liquid —
which was about two-thirds
water and one-third oil — to
the surface through “paths
of least resistance,” includ-
ing cracks and fissures in the
concrete and steel well bore
during the cement job.
So far, he said, crews have
vacuumed up about 90% of
the fluid that had pooled in
the dry creek bed that cuts
across the 485-acre oil field.
Chevron initially said the
seepage stopped several
hours after it was discovered
May 10. However, it reacti-vated June 8 after crews con-
ducted tests to determine its
cause — and then continued
intermittently in the vicinity
of the wellhead.
Two new seepages
emerged July 21, officials
said, shortly after Chevron
crews completed the ce-
menting operation.
Adjacent wells have been
shut down and idled wells
activated to ease pressure
beneath the ground and re-
duce surface flows. Air can-
nons were installed to keep
wildlife away. Oil work has
been halted within 1,200 feet
of the site.
So far, there are no re-
ported injuries or threats to
drinking water aquifers in
the region, officials said.
As for Chevron’s decision
not to formally alert the pub-
lic, Sean Comey, a spokes-
man for the giant oil corpo-
ration, said, “If there had
been any risk to human
health, we would have re-
sponded differently.”
As crews work day and
night to plug the leaks, Dave
Noerr, mayor of the nearby
city of Taft, has been re-
minding outsiders about the
benefits of oil and gas pro-
duction for jobs and their
personal lives.
California is home to
72,000 oil-producing wells
that last year produced 165
million barrels of oil from on-
shore and offshore facilities,
according to the California
Department of Conserva-
tion. California also con-
sumed 366 million barrels of
gas in 2017 — more than any
other state, according to the
U.S. Energy Information
Administration.
“There was a time when
Kern County was the largest
oil and gas producing county
in the United States outside
of Alaska,” Noerr said. “But
oil production has been in
decline for some time now,
which is too bad because of
the employment and sales
taxes it generates to support
essentials like hospitals and
schools.”
Noerr has a personal oil
connection: In 1981, he
worked as a roustabout in
the Kern oil fields. “Man,
that was a hot and nasty job
in mid-July,” he said.
Linda L. Hillan, 63, a
heavy-equipment operator
who shares a wood-framed
house in McKittrick with a
huge cat named Big Mama,
wouldn’t argue with any of
that.
Staring at the darkening
clouds of an approaching
monsoon that would wash
layers of smog and the smell
of crankcase oil from the
skies on a recent 100-plus-
degree afternoon, she grum-
bled, “Outsiders need to
worry about their own back-
yards — and leave us alone.”
Like most towns, after all,
McKittrick is imbued with
its own peculiarities.
“There’ve been a million
oil spills out here over the
years,” she said. “Hell, man,
I’ve seen wells catch fire and
burn for weeks on end. I’ve
seen leaking oil pouring over
a hill behind my house like a
waterfall.”CREWS WORKlast week on a leak at Cymric oil field in Kern County. More than 900,000 gallons of oil and brine have spilled so far, creating a hazardous black lagoon.
Photographs by Irfan KhanLos Angeles TimesRAUL RUBIOsaid Chevron’s track record on fixing spills means he’s not worried
about the leak near his home: “If it was a danger ... they would have notified us.”Cost of doing business in oil country
[O il,from A1]
‘Outsiders need to worry about
their own backyards — and leave
us alone.’
—LINDAL. HILLAN,
a heavy-equipment operator in McKittrick, Calif.$
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