So far, more than 900,000 gallons of oil and brine have oozed from a Chevron well, and filled a dry creek, creating a hazardous black lagoon near the Kern County town of McKittrick.
Near the jagged western edge of Kern County, where the Temblor Range gives way to a landscape of steam pipes, fuel lines and bobbing pumpjacks, there’s a definite mood in this dusty little oil town: Defiance.
“What more do they want?” he asked no one in particular. “We already work under the strictest standards imaginable, and adhere to them tooth and nail.” That kind of talk raises the 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.
About 12 years ago, a Cymric well blasted a mixture of oil and water so high that it traveled for miles in the wind. Gooey spots covered the town straddling a lonely stretch of State Highway 33 like leopard spots. Don’t believe it. Not a chance. Life is as safe and peaceful as it always has been, locals like to say.
“This case sends a really strong signal that the oil industry cannot just do whatever it wants — it must follow California’s environmental laws,” said Chelsea Tu, senior attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment.Separately, Newsom in June signed a state budget that earmarked $1.
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,” including cracks and fissures in the concrete and steel well bore during the cement job. Adjacent wells have been shut down and idled wells activated to ease pressure beneath the ground and reduce surface flows. Air canons were installed to keep wildlife away. Oil work has been halted within 1,200 feet of the site.
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