NARO-California, of the National Association of Royalty Owners, together with Pacific Legal Foundation announced Wednesday they filed a federal lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 1137, the 3,200-foot oil setback mandate that they argue violates the constitutional rights of oil and gas mineral and royalty owners.
According to NARO-CA and Pacific Legal Foundation, SB 1137 amounts to an uncompensated taking of private property in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Senate Bill 1137, which took effect on June 27, 2024, bans the construction of new oil wells and the maintenance or repair of existing wells within 3,200 feet of loosely defined “sensitive receptors,” potentially threatening to shut down energy resource infrastructure statewide, Hector Barajas reported for the Globe in April. SB 1137 was pushed through the California State Legislature in the final days of session in 2022 with little public debate or review.
The bill was also pushed through without any scientific basis to support it. None of the so-called studies the State Legislature pointed to as supporting the bill show that being within 3,200 feet of a well is harmful to a person’s health. The State Legislature slap-dash job here, one of the studies it tried to rely on was written after SB 1137 was adopted.
The Globe reported in 2022 on Senate Bill 1137, gut-and-amend legislation by Democrat Senators Lena Gonzalez and Monique Limón, to require 3,200-foot mandatory setbacks around California oil and gas wells:
Really disconcerting is “the bill would authorize the State Air Resources Board, and the State Water Resources Control Board to prescribe, adopt, and enforce any emergency regulations as necessary to implement, administer, and enforce these duties.”
Why now when oil production has responsibly occurred in Los Angeles County and around the state for more than 100 years?
In the City of Los Angeles:
- there are 26 oil and gas fields that intersect city boundaries, and 5,229 oil and gas wells, according to the CA DOGGR and verified by the City’s Petroleum Administrator.
- There are approximately 819 active, 296 idle, 3,181 plugged, and 933 buried wells.
- There are oil and gas facilities in nearly every section of the 503 square miles of the City.
- The City of Los Angeles produces 2% of California’s total production.
In 1988, the state of California only imported about 4.5% of all the oil that we consumed in our state. By 2020 California was importing over 70% of our oil from foreign sources.
Click here to read the article at California Globe.