The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management cancelled a proposed project to drill eight new oil wells in the Sespe Oil Field in Los Padres National Forest, about five miles north of Fillmore in Ventura County. Completing the new wells for production would have likely required hydraulic fracking, and opposition to fracking as well as an anticipated state ban on the practice are likely reasons for the project cancellation.
Texas oil company Seneca Resources originally filed for the permit with the Land Management Bureau in 2013, before Colorado-based Carbon California took over field operations. The company proposed to drill eight oil and gas wells at four existing well pads, install 7,960 feet of new pipeline, and install tanks and other related equipment. The Sespe Oil Field, one of the oldest oil fields in the state, has had more fracking than anywhere else between San Francisco and Los Angeles since 2011, according to Los Padres Forest Watch.
While California has not issued fracking permits since 2021, the cancellation of the project likely signals an end to the drilling process in the state. A recent plan to ban fracking in California from the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) will likely formalize longstanding political and environmental opposition.
California’s Efforts to Regulate Fracking
Fracking is a well stimulation method that injects water, rocks, sand and chemicals into difficult geological formations in order to allow subsurface oil and gas to flow to the top. Environmental groups have long opposed fracking out of health concerns, including concerns that the chemicals used in the process could contaminate groundwater and other water sources.
California’s plan to ban fracking comes more than a decade after legislative efforts to limit the practice began in 2011. The first successful attempt came in September 2013, when Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB 4, which imposed restrictions on fracking and implemented a regulatory structure over well stimulation treatments. Further legislative efforts to impose an outright moratorium on fracking failed.
In 2020, in Executive Order N-79-20 , Governor Gavin Newsom stated that California “must focus on the impacts of oil extraction as it transitions away from fossil fuel, by working to end the issuance of new hydraulic fracturing permits by 2024.” Newsom maintained that he did not have the authority to stop hydraulic fracking and issued a separate announcement in which he asked the legislature to end the issuance of new hydraulic fracturing permits by 2024. (see California’s Energy Transition from Oil State to Fossil Free: Introduction Part Two—Fracking)
In April 2021, in response to Newsom’s request, the legislature considered SB 467, which would have prohibited new or renewed fracking permits, acid well stimulation, cyclic steaming, and water and steam flooding after January 1, 2022 with a ban after 2027. The bill failed to pass out of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water. Newsom then issued an executive order that directed CalGEM to end the issuance of new fracking permits by January 2024.
In February 2024, CalGEM proposed an amendment to California oil and gas regulations that states that the regulator “will not approve applications for permits to conduct well stimulation treatments.” (see California Regulator Proposes to Officially Ban Fracking Permits.)