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Los Angeles zoning officials consider shutting down the Murphy drill site in Jefferson Park, where residents blame 32 oil wells for years of pollution violations and health problems.
Los Angeles zoning officials are considering the first shutdown of an oil production site in a city built on oil, weighing the fate of the Murphy drill site and its 32 closely-packed wells on West Adams Boulevard in South Los Angeles. Residents of the Jefferson Park neighborhood, just south of the 10 Freeway, have fought for more than a decade to close the facility, run by Bakersfield-based E&B Natural Resources. The city remains home to over 2,000 active wells.
Jefferson Park Residents Cite Health Harms
The Rev. Eddie Anderson, senior pastor at the nearby McCarty Memorial Christian Church, said he experienced the health consequences of living next to an oil production site firsthand. In 2020, he moved to Jefferson Park after his mentor, civil rights leader the Rev. James Lawson, advised him to live closer to his congregation in the historically Black neighborhood, now majority Black and Latino.
Soon, Anderson said, things started to get weird. His asthma, once mild, became acute. His dog developed cancer. His wife suffered a miscarriage. A neighbor, a deacon at his church, told him about a previous roommate who had died of cancer and said he had recently been diagnosed himself. After a second miscarriage, the couple began looking into the Murphy drill site two blocks away and learned about the violations.
His wife asked whether they had been poisoned, Anderson recalled. They left the neighborhood in 2024 for Mid City. He said he keeps meeting more women telling the same story and described the fight as not just an environmental justice issue but a civil rights issue.
Production Falls as Violations Mount
In its heyday in the 1970s, the site produced about 1,600 barrels of oil per day. As of this summer, that was down to about 240 barrels per day, according to E&B Natural Resources. At current prices, that is about $24,000 worth per day.
E&B spokesperson Ted Cordova said oil is an important resource for the region, providing local energy for Angelenos under some of the strictest environmental rules in the world instead of oil shipped in from overseas. He said the site employs local contractors and businesses and pays royalties to over 3,000 people who own mineral rights.
E&B took over the lease from Sentinel Peak Resources in 2019. Since then, Redeemer Community Partnership, a neighborhood nonprofit, has tracked 54 violation notices and 19 other types of notices at the site from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the state labor board, the state oil regulator, and the Los Angeles Fire Department. The L.A. Times reviewed the notices.
Several notices were referenced in the zoning hearing, including one for using equipment during a pipeline pressure test that is prohibited within 1,000 feet of a school. There are three schools in the immediate vicinity. In January 2025, methane was found at the site.
Neighbors Report Odors and Noise
Residents say the notices represent just a fraction of what occurs at the site, including noxious odors and noisy truck deliveries when people are trying to sleep. Some observations are made by peering over the low wall from the neighboring AIDS Healthcare Foundation clinic. E&B is almost a year delayed in complying with orders to enclose its operations behind a 30-foot structure.
Inspectors rarely arrive in time to witness residents complaints, so it is difficult for them to get a good picture of what is going on, said neighbor Silvia Esparza, standing a block from the site while workers inside climbed a tower and the smell of oil wafted through the air.
Cordova said the air quality notices represent routine oversight and do not rise to the level of nuisance, the legal name for what the city zoning administrator is investigating. He said via email that the hearing was also to determine if the Murphy drill site is jeopardizing public health or safety, and that E&B believes the administrative record does not support such findings.
The company commissioned a study from consulting firm Roux Associates, which Cordova said found no evidence in the administrative record demonstrating that the site adversely affects public health. The study, however, found neighbors closer to the Murphy wells or directly downwind had significantly lower lung function than those living further away.
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