Big Oil Launches Counterattack to California Law Against Neighborhood Drilling

Environmental justice communities and advocates across California celebrated a major victory in August when state legislators passed a bill to ban new oil wells and phase out old ones within 3,200 feet of sensitive sites like homes, schools, and hospitals.

It was a win decades in the making. Activists had spent years fighting to protect communities from the toxic impacts of neighborhood oil drilling, which include higher risks of cancer, asthma, heart disease, preterm birth, and other reproductive issues. Democratic state Senator Monique Limón, who introduced the setbacks bill, known as SB 1137, called its passing, “a historic moment in California history.”

But Big Oil struck back. The California Independent Petroleum Association, or CIPA, the trade group representing drillers in the state, announced it has gathered enough signatures to force a referendum onto the 2024 state ballot. If approved by voters, it would overturn the state legislature’s decision and dismantle the new setbacks law, leaving it to CalGEM, the state’s slow moving regulatory body for oil and gas, to implement protections on its own accord.

CIPA originally filed the paperwork for the referendum just three days after Governor Gavin Newsom signed the oil setback bill into law in September, and has spent months collecting the more than 600,000 signatures needed for the initiative to be formally included on the 2024 ballot; Stop the Energy Shutdown, the CIPA-run committee sponsoring the referendum effort, has now collected over 978,000. Over the next few months, California’s secretary of state and county registrars will count and certify the signatures.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/big-oil-launches-counterattack-california-153600659.html