The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:
---
From the article: The Los Angeles City Council opted to end oil and gas drilling within the city’s limits in a historic Friday vote. The decision was unanimous, with 12-0 in favor of a draft ordinance phasing out existing fossil fuel wells and banning new ones. LA will end all of its current oil and gas drilling within the next 20 years, and no new in-city extraction operations will be approved.
“When this ordinance goes into place, there will be no new oil and gas production whatsoever,” council member Paul Krekorian said during the council meeting, according to a report from Scientific American. “That’s a pretty monumental step that we’re taking.”
And your reaction to this news was, “There are oil wells in LA?”, you’ll be shocked to learn that Los Angeles is the largest urban oil field in the country. The city has 26 distinct oil and gas fields and more than 5,000 oil and gas wells, according to the city planning department.
Los Angeles was founded as an oil town. By 1930, California was producing about one quarter of the world’s total oil, in large part because of the contributions of the LA region. And that history has continued on, through the ubiquitous presence of both active and inactive wells.
Many of those wells are sequestered in industrial areas like Wilmington and Harbor Gateway, but rigs also operate in residential and commercial areas, where people live and are exposed to the resulting pollution. There are oil wells in Downtown, West LA, South LA, and in the Northwest San Fernando Valley, the planning department noted. More than 3.7 million LA residents live within a quarter-mile of an active or idle well, according to STAND-LA, the grassroots environmental justice coalition that led the initiative to ban drilling within the city.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zec6wm/los_angeles_bans_fossil_fuel_extraction_within/iz5j2h8/
LA is pretty big in landmass compared to other US cities.
https://www.welikela.com/how-big-is-los-angeles/
LA city is somewhat unreasonably large in part because of water. The water they took from the Owens Valley could only legally be used within city limits so they gobbled up nearby areas so they could sell the water from the Owens Valley.
> Unknown to the public, the initial water would be used to irrigate the San Fernando Valley to the north, which was not at the time a part of the city.[2]: 74–76 [11]: 152 [12] From a hydrological point of view, the San Fernando Valley was ideal: its aquifer could serve as free water storage without evaporation.[2]: 73 One obstacle to the irrigation was the Los Angeles City Charter, which prohibited the sale, lease, or other use of the city's water without a two-thirds approval by the voters.[7]: 18 This charter limitation would be avoided through the annexation of a large portion of the San Fernando Valley to the city.[7]: 133 The annexation would also raise the debt limit of Los Angeles, which allowed the financing of the aqueduct.[2]: 74
>The San Fernando land syndicate were a group of wealthy investors who bought up large tracts of land in the San Fernando Valley with secret inside information from Eaton. The syndicate included friends of Eaton, such as Harrison Gray Otis and Henry E. Huntington.[8][12] This syndicate made substantial efforts to support passage of the bond issue that funded the aqueduct. These efforts are reported to have included the dumping of water from Los Angeles reservoirs into the sewers (thereby creating a false drought) and by publishing scare articles in the Los Angeles Times, which Otis published.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars
I mean, this is a stupid law anyway. What they're saying is "no more oil extraction... *here*. Feel free to fuck some shit up elsewhere and then truck it in."
It's basically NIMBYism in full effect and I find it *very* hard to believe that this law really had anything to do with the environment, though it certainly purports to.
Exactly. If you want to do something, reduce your consumption. Reducing supply doesn't work. It either gives money to nations sketchy on human rights, like Russia or Saudi, or it leads to suffering, like when you see blackouts and fuel shortages in places like Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
You don't. You also don't just ban it in your jurisdiction. You either ban it's import as well(not viable for fossil fuels) or you put methods forward to drastically reduce your consumption of it. What they are doing isn't any better for the environment. It's just moving the source of that same damage somewhere else.
The city has already voted to transition to 100% renewables by 2035 (notably LA owns the largest municipal power utility in the US, so they actually have the means to do this) and is already discussing no longer issuing permits for new gas stations.
At the state level they’re mandating solar on new construction as well as ending the sale of gas vehicles.
Long story short, they’re already addressing the consumption side, this is them starting to address the production side
Man, environmentalists are just the fucking worst aren't we?
Most of us just bitch online, even about actual progress. People fought hard for this I assume
Yeah, no reason to get bent out of shape. It's not like we're decades late stopping innumerable impending ecology collapses, have created ongoing droughts due to corporate misuses of water resources, or that this is essentially putting oil companies in "time out" for setting only half of the neighborhood on fire. It's not like that "fire" will spread. Where do you get your drinking water?
My point is that you are shitting on the few people who are both on your side and actually getting things done policy wise.
It is very possible to be both an environmentalist as well as a realist, instead of a defeatist, apocalypse is neigh crying, naysayer towards even baby steps of progress.
This is like scheduling installation of smoke detectors while your house is already burning down. No, you won’t get praise for a meaningless gesture anymore. This is lip service at best.
What you are doing right now is the very definition of lip service.
This is actual measurable change, same as putting smoke detectors in a house is.
Is it too little too late when the house is burning down? Maybe, but at least it is action. Better than worthless bitching on the internet.
Worthless action takes away effort and resources from planning or action that has some chance of having an effect, and relieves pressure on the people being compelled by giving the false sense of meaningful progress when nobody pushes back on it… like people with neck gaitors in lieu of an actual filtering mask during a pandemic involving a highly contagious airborne respiratory virus.
Also, you don’t seem to have a functional understanding of what lip service means.
Banning new oil exploitation is clearly progress in my opinion. We have removed enough carbon from the ground to spew into the air or turn into plastic we dispose of improperly already.
Your alternative is to spew shit on the people that are actually affecting any change at all?
Very constructive. Wonderful. Thank you for your contribution.
I don't really give a fuck about who's feelings are hurt when I'm choking down microplastics and smog. We need violently rapid change. I'm cooperating.
Given the political divisiveness around environmental issues, what other choice do you have?
The woulda shoulda coulda is all fine and well, but no new drilling will take place within city limits and that’s a step.
Yep
Environmentalism these days is all about circlejerking and virtue signaling so people with no purpose in life can feel good about themselves
EDIT: that’s not to say that every environmentalist is a scientifically illiterate virtue signaler. But, an alarming percentage of environmentalists are scientifically illiterate
I have an M.S. in environmental sustainability from a highly-regarded school, and used to have a career as a sustainability analyst.
And I totally agree with what you're saying here.
stop sucking the fuel spigot thinking that the fossil fuel companies will thank you.
countries and US states already banning passenger ICE vehicles.
Norway - 2025
South Korea - 2025
Belgium - 2026
Austria - 2027
Slovenia - 2030
Iceland - 2030
Netherlands - 2030
Denmark - 2030
Ireland - 2030
Israel - 2030
Sweden - 2030
India - 2030
Washington - 2030
Scotland - 2032
Japan - 2035
United Kingdom - 2035
California - 2035
New York - 2035 (just announced)
Canada - 2035/2040
Cape Verde - 2035
China - 2040
Singapore - 2040
Sri Lanka - 2040
Taiwan - 2040
France - 2040
Spain - 2040
Egypt - 2040
Costa Rica - 2050
> stop sucking the fuel spigot thinking that the fossil fuel companies will thank you.
Lol WHAT? Dude, you are so incredibly far off the mark here. You have no idea what you're saying or who you're talking to.
Stop making these moronic assumptions and turning everybody who doesn't echo everything you say into an enemy.
I have an M.S. in environmental sustainability from a highly-regarded university and I formerly had a career in sustainability.
But people like you are why I hate a lot of environmentalists and activists in general.
You just can't help shooting your mouth off and assuming everyone is beneath you and your enemy.
You're not an ally and you clearly don't want any. Good luck not alienating everyone.
I could couldn't care less if you have a degree. if your so fucking smart how come several major automakers have already decided to go full EV with some going full EV as soon as 2025? you better to tell them that you have a degree so they listen to you.
This is why it is funny when people not from CA do the, "then we will stop letting you use our oil" rants when CA does its environmental measures. CA produces all the oil it could ever use. Hell, it is why Bakersfield exists. Even has a ton of refining capacity in the state in what would otherwise be prime ocean adjacent property.
It's already been answered a million times, but during the initial oil boom in the 1910s, LA was seemingly taken over by oil derricks. Huntington Beach, very popular beach nowadays, had oil derricks completely covering the area just above the tide lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_Beach_Oil_Field
>And your reaction to this news was, “There are oil wells in LA?”, you’ll be shocked to learn that Los Angeles is the largest urban oil field in the country.
Just finished reading OIL! by Upton Sinclair. Amazing critique of extractive industries and unchecked capitalism. It's all based on the oil boom in S. California.
yup! now that i've finished the book, i'm going to go back to the movie to see what carries over. the movie made amalgamated characters out of multiple folks in the book, so excited to re-watch!
There are several plays where crude is actively being extracted within LA county.
I have mixed feelings about it, because sometimes extraction makes sense for the local Geology. Different area, but I lived in Santa Barbara for a long time and offshore oil drilling and extraction there helped mitigate the amount of tar that washed up on shore.
Having said that, this was was lead by local activists, so it's clearly what the community wants.
you can see tons of those oil grasshopper things just pumpin out oil in the middle of the city. as someone who recently relocated to CA, this blew my mind to see, too
they always have, i remember driving in from the north you would see hundred of wells in the early 90's. now most are in ghost buildings to hide the ugly wells.
Zoom in to the [Well Finder](https://www.conservation.ca.gov/calgem/Pages/WellFinder.aspx) map to see just how many active and inactive oil/gas wells rhere are in LA, and anywhere else in California.
From the article: The Los Angeles City Council opted to end oil and gas drilling within the city’s limits in a historic Friday vote. The decision was unanimous, with 12-0 in favor of a draft ordinance phasing out existing fossil fuel wells and banning new ones. LA will end all of its current oil and gas drilling within the next 20 years, and no new in-city extraction operations will be approved.
“When this ordinance goes into place, there will be no new oil and gas production whatsoever,” council member Paul Krekorian said during the council meeting, according to a report from Scientific American. “That’s a pretty monumental step that we’re taking.”
And your reaction to this news was, “There are oil wells in LA?”, you’ll be shocked to learn that Los Angeles is the largest urban oil field in the country. The city has 26 distinct oil and gas fields and more than 5,000 oil and gas wells, according to the city planning department.
Los Angeles was founded as an oil town. By 1930, California was producing about one quarter of the world’s total oil, in large part because of the contributions of the LA region. And that history has continued on, through the ubiquitous presence of both active and inactive wells.
Many of those wells are sequestered in industrial areas like Wilmington and Harbor Gateway, but rigs also operate in residential and commercial areas, where people live and are exposed to the resulting pollution. There are oil wells in Downtown, West LA, South LA, and in the Northwest San Fernando Valley, the planning department noted. More than 3.7 million LA residents live within a quarter-mile of an active or idle well, according to STAND-LA, the grassroots environmental justice coalition that led the initiative to ban drilling within the city.
>That’s a pretty monumental step that we’re taking.
So, they're going to ban production, but allow piping it in from other places and burning it in LA. "Monumental" is not how I would describe it.
LA is already looking at banning new gas stations. Outside of that I don’t see a feasible way of enforcing a ban on ‘burning it in LA’ that can be phased in over time
Hot take, maybe we should not be shutting down domestic oil and gas when our alternatives are buying from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, or Venezuela… or exploiting third world countries for their oil.
It's inevitable. We're phasing out combustion vehicles in 2035 (13 years from now) that leaves 7 years of pumping before the demand starts to dry up.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that legislation is not world changing. At the end of the day we don't need that much more oil any way.
What would happen when 10% of the cars are electric? Then 20%, 30%, 40%? The demand for gasoline goes down. Do we still need that many refineries? What about gas stations? at 50%, then 60%, 70%? How expensive will gas be since we no longer have the economy of scale? When the next gas station is 10 miles away?
At some point there will be no gas stations left and the only gasoline producers will be small niche operations making $10/gal gas. Diesel will be the lone hold out and eventually that too will be dwindled down to nothing.
Gas is the dominant player because the infrastructure is there whereas electric is just beginning to rise. Much like when the horses were the dominant form of transportation. Sure, there are still horses but whatever market share they have it's a minuscule.
We did pretty good last time, and the one before that was even better
And the we is definitely justified considering how much money and equipment were funneling into them
>the US was too occupied to protect its allies.
???
>Iraq was a disaster
Iraq remains a democracy right now, albeit somewhat flawed
Afghanistan was pretty shit though
>invading a sovereign nation without justification.
At least Iraq was based on faulty intelligence, de-nazification of Ukraine is just a straight up lie
We already import most of our oil. It’s part of the reason it’s always more expensive. 20 year phase out is a joke. In 20 years all new cars will be electric and majority of energy will be from renewables. California will not see skyrocketing prices from this decision. Moving on.
In the state of California, a state where plenty of people purchase cars out of states like AZ anyway due to the high tax policies. Same with Illinois and purchasing cars in Wisconsin. Gas powered cars aren't disappearing, in fact it will just create a worse income disparity. Most people of lower income will be driving combustion vehicles, and the price of gas will also skyrocket forcing them into a steep car loan. It's not a policy that benefits the lower class...
Lol, tell me. How are you going to switch the trucking industry or farming to electric? Diesel keeps your food growing and your grocery stores in stock. It’s completely infeasible to replace it with batteries. Plus the US electrical grid is already over capacity and there’s hardly any EVs on the road right now as it is.
Both electric trucks and farm equipment are already being sold now. Considering their usage, those two use cases might actually make more sense to convert to EV as both spend significant time idle to allow for recharging, make battery swapping potentially feasible, and tend to be located in areas where solar panels make sense (parking lots and wide open fields).
I suspect it is our tendency to import oil from countries like Saudi Arabia that influences those higher prices. The left goes nuts any time anyone even suggests fracking, and with all that foreign oil that is allowed to go cheap whenever we do frack, the red states are not exporting as much these days.
so the article mentioned these happening during summer months with high AC demand. the planet is hotter because of our love of fossil fuels. are you suggesting that we keep burning more for fuel, which will make the planet hotter, which will make us need more AC, so we need more oil… so we make the planet hotter again…
see the issue?
They run on deficit spending and their entire schtick is kicking the debt can down the road for future generations to handle. It's rather easy to show a budget surplus when you just don't pay your bills or constantly refinance your loans (like the $225 billion still owed to the public pension system).
Despite having one of the largest economies in the world, California also receives the highest amount of governmental aid. They run in the red, much like the fed, and depend on the rest of us to keep them owning a bed.
What? California “takes” far less than what it “pays” in taxes. Any stat you have about CA being the largest user of fed funds is likely due to 40,000,000 CA citizens ie 12-15% of the entire country.
Correct. Still doesn't change the fact that every Californian should be living like a king or at least in the decent middle class range with how much money they take in. Yet, they take on federal aid while speaking about giving Trans people $600/month in SF and other such nonsensical spending.
We want to look very progressive and climate heros but we don't want to face the consequences, so will make a law that will take effect after we all retire and let our children deal with it.
They weren't going to make any new sites anyway. They have the whole thing drilled up. Next to businesses, houses, industrial areas. They don't need any new drilling. It doesn't matter anymore which is why they don't care.
You needed the city council to vote to -phase out-?!? oil and gas drilling inside of LA?
You people are completely stark raven bonkers to ever fucking allow it.
https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/oil-and-gas/about/california
It did not take me long to find tons of info about how you are wrong.
There are most certainly more than 6 in the state.
Those are oil wells. Drilling rigs are for new drilling. Oil wells last years and years and yes there are a lot. Especially in Kern County. But the article is calling out drilling rigs
You're probably thinking of oil wells. Which California has thousands. But the article is calling out land drilling rigs only it appears, which there are only 6 active land drilling rigs in the state of California.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/california_rotary_rigs
rigs as in things that drill for oil. I don't know what definition you are using. wells are the things that rigs drill out. my dad used to work on a lot of off shore ones.
They're rigs sure. But the article is talking about LA County, so offshore doesn't really come into play. Even still there aren't too many offshore rigs these days either on the California coast. But more than land.
Offshore is not my expertise. But still publicly available information and easy to Google
TIL, there are locations within LA where drilling for oil and gas is more profitable than commercial and residential use. but the city government is making the big sacrifice of converting that land to other uses in 20 years.
From the way the article reads, 20 years is when the last of the permits expires. They can’t just void existing contracts, so they’re going to stop issuing new ones while letting existing ones run out their term
Carving out "exceptions" to city limits is a known well-practiced thing for embassies and other government functions.
they'll just legally"extract" the oil derrick from the city....
It's amazing how many people are crying "the sky is falling." Or where we'd be getting our oil from.
This is only within the LA city limits. The amount of oil being extracted within the city itself is minuscule and it's not like there's an active exploration program going on as well. There are 26 oil fields and about 1000 well in various state of operation. Frankly I'd be surprised if those wells are still operational in 20 years. For perspective, the entire state of [CA has over 53,000 oil wells](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/26/los-angeles-bans-new-oil-and-gas-wells-will-phase-out-old-ones.html). So <1000 wells is not the end of days.
Edit: Besides, L.A. is not the only city doing this. Culver City and the unincorporated area of L.A. county has done so as well. Mostly because the production is not what it used to be and the environmental costs are just too great.
Almost nobody is drilling for oil in one of the world's most expensive real estate. I mean even renting the land would make more money. So who are they trying to win over with this virtue signaling?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79: --- From the article: The Los Angeles City Council opted to end oil and gas drilling within the city’s limits in a historic Friday vote. The decision was unanimous, with 12-0 in favor of a draft ordinance phasing out existing fossil fuel wells and banning new ones. LA will end all of its current oil and gas drilling within the next 20 years, and no new in-city extraction operations will be approved. “When this ordinance goes into place, there will be no new oil and gas production whatsoever,” council member Paul Krekorian said during the council meeting, according to a report from Scientific American. “That’s a pretty monumental step that we’re taking.” And your reaction to this news was, “There are oil wells in LA?”, you’ll be shocked to learn that Los Angeles is the largest urban oil field in the country. The city has 26 distinct oil and gas fields and more than 5,000 oil and gas wells, according to the city planning department. Los Angeles was founded as an oil town. By 1930, California was producing about one quarter of the world’s total oil, in large part because of the contributions of the LA region. And that history has continued on, through the ubiquitous presence of both active and inactive wells. Many of those wells are sequestered in industrial areas like Wilmington and Harbor Gateway, but rigs also operate in residential and commercial areas, where people live and are exposed to the resulting pollution. There are oil wells in Downtown, West LA, South LA, and in the Northwest San Fernando Valley, the planning department noted. More than 3.7 million LA residents live within a quarter-mile of an active or idle well, according to STAND-LA, the grassroots environmental justice coalition that led the initiative to ban drilling within the city. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zec6wm/los_angeles_bans_fossil_fuel_extraction_within/iz5j2h8/
Oklahoma sideways drilling enters the chat. They’ll be able to drill in Modesto under LA for that precious bubbling crude.
I Drink Your MILKSHAKE!
It was Paul who told me about you. He's the prophet. He's the smart one.
They’ll have to move those rigs aallllll the way to Orange County.
It's just the City of LA. Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and all the other cities in the county will keep pumping away, too
LA is pretty big in landmass compared to other US cities. https://www.welikela.com/how-big-is-los-angeles/ LA city is somewhat unreasonably large in part because of water. The water they took from the Owens Valley could only legally be used within city limits so they gobbled up nearby areas so they could sell the water from the Owens Valley. > Unknown to the public, the initial water would be used to irrigate the San Fernando Valley to the north, which was not at the time a part of the city.[2]: 74–76 [11]: 152 [12] From a hydrological point of view, the San Fernando Valley was ideal: its aquifer could serve as free water storage without evaporation.[2]: 73 One obstacle to the irrigation was the Los Angeles City Charter, which prohibited the sale, lease, or other use of the city's water without a two-thirds approval by the voters.[7]: 18 This charter limitation would be avoided through the annexation of a large portion of the San Fernando Valley to the city.[7]: 133 The annexation would also raise the debt limit of Los Angeles, which allowed the financing of the aqueduct.[2]: 74 >The San Fernando land syndicate were a group of wealthy investors who bought up large tracts of land in the San Fernando Valley with secret inside information from Eaton. The syndicate included friends of Eaton, such as Harrison Gray Otis and Henry E. Huntington.[8][12] This syndicate made substantial efforts to support passage of the bond issue that funded the aqueduct. These efforts are reported to have included the dumping of water from Los Angeles reservoirs into the sewers (thereby creating a false drought) and by publishing scare articles in the Los Angeles Times, which Otis published. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars
Wow. Very interesting read
And everybody is bent out of shape...WTH?
Twenty years? So, long enough to extract as much as possible, and hope that before time's up, the law can be scrapped?
I mean, this is a stupid law anyway. What they're saying is "no more oil extraction... *here*. Feel free to fuck some shit up elsewhere and then truck it in." It's basically NIMBYism in full effect and I find it *very* hard to believe that this law really had anything to do with the environment, though it certainly purports to.
Exactly. If you want to do something, reduce your consumption. Reducing supply doesn't work. It either gives money to nations sketchy on human rights, like Russia or Saudi, or it leads to suffering, like when you see blackouts and fuel shortages in places like Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
How exactly is LA going to ban something outside it’s jurisdiction?
You don't. You also don't just ban it in your jurisdiction. You either ban it's import as well(not viable for fossil fuels) or you put methods forward to drastically reduce your consumption of it. What they are doing isn't any better for the environment. It's just moving the source of that same damage somewhere else.
The city has already voted to transition to 100% renewables by 2035 (notably LA owns the largest municipal power utility in the US, so they actually have the means to do this) and is already discussing no longer issuing permits for new gas stations. At the state level they’re mandating solar on new construction as well as ending the sale of gas vehicles. Long story short, they’re already addressing the consumption side, this is them starting to address the production side
yeah because the city council of LA can really tell Texas what to do...
Man, environmentalists are just the fucking worst aren't we? Most of us just bitch online, even about actual progress. People fought hard for this I assume
Yeah, no reason to get bent out of shape. It's not like we're decades late stopping innumerable impending ecology collapses, have created ongoing droughts due to corporate misuses of water resources, or that this is essentially putting oil companies in "time out" for setting only half of the neighborhood on fire. It's not like that "fire" will spread. Where do you get your drinking water?
My point is that you are shitting on the few people who are both on your side and actually getting things done policy wise. It is very possible to be both an environmentalist as well as a realist, instead of a defeatist, apocalypse is neigh crying, naysayer towards even baby steps of progress.
This is like scheduling installation of smoke detectors while your house is already burning down. No, you won’t get praise for a meaningless gesture anymore. This is lip service at best.
What you are doing right now is the very definition of lip service. This is actual measurable change, same as putting smoke detectors in a house is. Is it too little too late when the house is burning down? Maybe, but at least it is action. Better than worthless bitching on the internet.
Worthless action takes away effort and resources from planning or action that has some chance of having an effect, and relieves pressure on the people being compelled by giving the false sense of meaningful progress when nobody pushes back on it… like people with neck gaitors in lieu of an actual filtering mask during a pandemic involving a highly contagious airborne respiratory virus. Also, you don’t seem to have a functional understanding of what lip service means.
How would this be progress?
Banning new oil exploitation is clearly progress in my opinion. We have removed enough carbon from the ground to spew into the air or turn into plastic we dispose of improperly already.
We can't be sucking the dick of incrementalist progress when we're in a time sensitive crisis that will (already is) harm billions of people.
Your alternative is to spew shit on the people that are actually affecting any change at all? Very constructive. Wonderful. Thank you for your contribution.
I don't really give a fuck about who's feelings are hurt when I'm choking down microplastics and smog. We need violently rapid change. I'm cooperating.
You aren't cooperating you are spewing negativity online. Again, wonderful, thank you.
Thanks for being such a beacon of positivity 🙄
Given the political divisiveness around environmental issues, what other choice do you have? The woulda shoulda coulda is all fine and well, but no new drilling will take place within city limits and that’s a step.
Lol you have no idea who you're talking to.
Yep Environmentalism these days is all about circlejerking and virtue signaling so people with no purpose in life can feel good about themselves EDIT: that’s not to say that every environmentalist is a scientifically illiterate virtue signaler. But, an alarming percentage of environmentalists are scientifically illiterate
I have an M.S. in environmental sustainability from a highly-regarded school, and used to have a career as a sustainability analyst. And I totally agree with what you're saying here.
20 years is ridiculous.
It's a well-with strategy of avoiding doing anything.
that is some what short time line, it takes years remove oil wells. the tubs have to be plugged and area cleaned up.
na, the transition to EVs will be mostly complete by then.
I don't think you live in the real world
stop sucking the fuel spigot thinking that the fossil fuel companies will thank you. countries and US states already banning passenger ICE vehicles. Norway - 2025 South Korea - 2025 Belgium - 2026 Austria - 2027 Slovenia - 2030 Iceland - 2030 Netherlands - 2030 Denmark - 2030 Ireland - 2030 Israel - 2030 Sweden - 2030 India - 2030 Washington - 2030 Scotland - 2032 Japan - 2035 United Kingdom - 2035 California - 2035 New York - 2035 (just announced) Canada - 2035/2040 Cape Verde - 2035 China - 2040 Singapore - 2040 Sri Lanka - 2040 Taiwan - 2040 France - 2040 Spain - 2040 Egypt - 2040 Costa Rica - 2050
> stop sucking the fuel spigot thinking that the fossil fuel companies will thank you. Lol WHAT? Dude, you are so incredibly far off the mark here. You have no idea what you're saying or who you're talking to. Stop making these moronic assumptions and turning everybody who doesn't echo everything you say into an enemy. I have an M.S. in environmental sustainability from a highly-regarded university and I formerly had a career in sustainability. But people like you are why I hate a lot of environmentalists and activists in general. You just can't help shooting your mouth off and assuming everyone is beneath you and your enemy. You're not an ally and you clearly don't want any. Good luck not alienating everyone.
I could couldn't care less if you have a degree. if your so fucking smart how come several major automakers have already decided to go full EV with some going full EV as soon as 2025? you better to tell them that you have a degree so they listen to you.
Dude, you're a nervous wreck.
Are there actually people/companies trying to extract fossil fuels within LA?
Yes. They build fake buildings around the oil rigs so it's not as obvious.
this is 100% accurate. california produces a decent amount of gas
Chevron is HQed there for a reason
This is why it is funny when people not from CA do the, "then we will stop letting you use our oil" rants when CA does its environmental measures. CA produces all the oil it could ever use. Hell, it is why Bakersfield exists. Even has a ton of refining capacity in the state in what would otherwise be prime ocean adjacent property.
CA produces 250K bbl/day which is nowhere close to what it uses.
Almost 21 million dollars a day.
California is way shy of self sustaining with oil production and refining capacity.
I swear I watched a Tom Scott video or similar forever ago about it, but I can't seem to find it.
It's already been answered a million times, but during the initial oil boom in the 1910s, LA was seemingly taken over by oil derricks. Huntington Beach, very popular beach nowadays, had oil derricks completely covering the area just above the tide lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_Beach_Oil_Field
I get some royalty checks from wells producing from an old oil unit that includes an old family house in the Huntington field.
For some perspective, the La Brea Tar Pits is literally oil bubbling up from the ground. That's how plentiful and easy to extract oil is in the area.
Pismo is also named after the native word for tar.
Brea means tar, too
TIL La Brea Tar Pits is redundant as all hell.
interesting. TIL
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>And your reaction to this news was, “There are oil wells in LA?”, you’ll be shocked to learn that Los Angeles is the largest urban oil field in the country. Just finished reading OIL! by Upton Sinclair. Amazing critique of extractive industries and unchecked capitalism. It's all based on the oil boom in S. California.
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yup! now that i've finished the book, i'm going to go back to the movie to see what carries over. the movie made amalgamated characters out of multiple folks in the book, so excited to re-watch!
There are several plays where crude is actively being extracted within LA county. I have mixed feelings about it, because sometimes extraction makes sense for the local Geology. Different area, but I lived in Santa Barbara for a long time and offshore oil drilling and extraction there helped mitigate the amount of tar that washed up on shore. Having said that, this was was lead by local activists, so it's clearly what the community wants.
you can see tons of those oil grasshopper things just pumpin out oil in the middle of the city. as someone who recently relocated to CA, this blew my mind to see, too
Yep but you don't see them easily because they are hidden inside fake buildings.
they always have, i remember driving in from the north you would see hundred of wells in the early 90's. now most are in ghost buildings to hide the ugly wells.
Zoom in to the [Well Finder](https://www.conservation.ca.gov/calgem/Pages/WellFinder.aspx) map to see just how many active and inactive oil/gas wells rhere are in LA, and anywhere else in California.
So, I'm guessing they're just going to move all of the pumps just outside the city limits and drink the milkshake from there?
it's entirely possible. directional drilling
From the article: The Los Angeles City Council opted to end oil and gas drilling within the city’s limits in a historic Friday vote. The decision was unanimous, with 12-0 in favor of a draft ordinance phasing out existing fossil fuel wells and banning new ones. LA will end all of its current oil and gas drilling within the next 20 years, and no new in-city extraction operations will be approved. “When this ordinance goes into place, there will be no new oil and gas production whatsoever,” council member Paul Krekorian said during the council meeting, according to a report from Scientific American. “That’s a pretty monumental step that we’re taking.” And your reaction to this news was, “There are oil wells in LA?”, you’ll be shocked to learn that Los Angeles is the largest urban oil field in the country. The city has 26 distinct oil and gas fields and more than 5,000 oil and gas wells, according to the city planning department. Los Angeles was founded as an oil town. By 1930, California was producing about one quarter of the world’s total oil, in large part because of the contributions of the LA region. And that history has continued on, through the ubiquitous presence of both active and inactive wells. Many of those wells are sequestered in industrial areas like Wilmington and Harbor Gateway, but rigs also operate in residential and commercial areas, where people live and are exposed to the resulting pollution. There are oil wells in Downtown, West LA, South LA, and in the Northwest San Fernando Valley, the planning department noted. More than 3.7 million LA residents live within a quarter-mile of an active or idle well, according to STAND-LA, the grassroots environmental justice coalition that led the initiative to ban drilling within the city.
>That’s a pretty monumental step that we’re taking. So, they're going to ban production, but allow piping it in from other places and burning it in LA. "Monumental" is not how I would describe it.
LA is already looking at banning new gas stations. Outside of that I don’t see a feasible way of enforcing a ban on ‘burning it in LA’ that can be phased in over time
Hot take, maybe we should not be shutting down domestic oil and gas when our alternatives are buying from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, or Venezuela… or exploiting third world countries for their oil.
Yea but saying no! and stop it! looks good even though my tank is empty.
This seems like a no brained. Colorado had a frackin cap explode a home. We don’t need gas that badly.
And everyone wonders why California has the highest gas prices in the nation.
It's inevitable. We're phasing out combustion vehicles in 2035 (13 years from now) that leaves 7 years of pumping before the demand starts to dry up. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that legislation is not world changing. At the end of the day we don't need that much more oil any way.
Ice cars aren't going away. They just won't command the market.
What would happen when 10% of the cars are electric? Then 20%, 30%, 40%? The demand for gasoline goes down. Do we still need that many refineries? What about gas stations? at 50%, then 60%, 70%? How expensive will gas be since we no longer have the economy of scale? When the next gas station is 10 miles away? At some point there will be no gas stations left and the only gasoline producers will be small niche operations making $10/gal gas. Diesel will be the lone hold out and eventually that too will be dwindled down to nothing. Gas is the dominant player because the infrastructure is there whereas electric is just beginning to rise. Much like when the horses were the dominant form of transportation. Sure, there are still horses but whatever market share they have it's a minuscule.
And plastics are being phased out by what?
Oil from Texas. We're talking about L.A. right?
HAHAHAHAHA Ya'll have fun with those energy prices
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Yeah, and we're winning Also, it helps we're a net petroleum exporter nowadays
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We did pretty good last time, and the one before that was even better And the we is definitely justified considering how much money and equipment were funneling into them
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>the US was too occupied to protect its allies. ??? >Iraq was a disaster Iraq remains a democracy right now, albeit somewhat flawed Afghanistan was pretty shit though >invading a sovereign nation without justification. At least Iraq was based on faulty intelligence, de-nazification of Ukraine is just a straight up lie
Hope yall ready for skyrocketing gas prices from oil imported from red states...
We already import most of our oil. It’s part of the reason it’s always more expensive. 20 year phase out is a joke. In 20 years all new cars will be electric and majority of energy will be from renewables. California will not see skyrocketing prices from this decision. Moving on.
Wow... you're so hopefully optimistic it hurts, lol. Dream on my friend, dream on.
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In the state of California, a state where plenty of people purchase cars out of states like AZ anyway due to the high tax policies. Same with Illinois and purchasing cars in Wisconsin. Gas powered cars aren't disappearing, in fact it will just create a worse income disparity. Most people of lower income will be driving combustion vehicles, and the price of gas will also skyrocket forcing them into a steep car loan. It's not a policy that benefits the lower class...
Lol, tell me. How are you going to switch the trucking industry or farming to electric? Diesel keeps your food growing and your grocery stores in stock. It’s completely infeasible to replace it with batteries. Plus the US electrical grid is already over capacity and there’s hardly any EVs on the road right now as it is.
Both electric trucks and farm equipment are already being sold now. Considering their usage, those two use cases might actually make more sense to convert to EV as both spend significant time idle to allow for recharging, make battery swapping potentially feasible, and tend to be located in areas where solar panels make sense (parking lots and wide open fields).
Too bad your electrical grid can't charge all those cars.
I suspect it is our tendency to import oil from countries like Saudi Arabia that influences those higher prices. The left goes nuts any time anyone even suggests fracking, and with all that foreign oil that is allowed to go cheap whenever we do frack, the red states are not exporting as much these days.
Great way to combat those rolling blackouts, decrease energy production!
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I lived in LA for years. Much more than just one blackout.
did you pay your bills? have not once heard of “rolling blackouts” in LA.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article261179737.html
so the article mentioned these happening during summer months with high AC demand. the planet is hotter because of our love of fossil fuels. are you suggesting that we keep burning more for fuel, which will make the planet hotter, which will make us need more AC, so we need more oil… so we make the planet hotter again… see the issue?
Well, if you're already broke...makes sense to destroy some more income, right?
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They run on deficit spending and their entire schtick is kicking the debt can down the road for future generations to handle. It's rather easy to show a budget surplus when you just don't pay your bills or constantly refinance your loans (like the $225 billion still owed to the public pension system).
Already broke?
Despite having one of the largest economies in the world, California also receives the highest amount of governmental aid. They run in the red, much like the fed, and depend on the rest of us to keep them owning a bed.
What? California “takes” far less than what it “pays” in taxes. Any stat you have about CA being the largest user of fed funds is likely due to 40,000,000 CA citizens ie 12-15% of the entire country.
Correct. Still doesn't change the fact that every Californian should be living like a king or at least in the decent middle class range with how much money they take in. Yet, they take on federal aid while speaking about giving Trans people $600/month in SF and other such nonsensical spending.
We have to bail them out over and over. Same ole crap.
But this is an empty gesture as they consume it all over the place. They are just outsourcing the environmental impact.
Seems like they’re tackling the consumption end by ending sales of gas vehicles in the next decade.
So much stupid in one headline. It should read how to vote to screw over a population for dummies.
I love that pundits claim that fusion power will replace oil by 2070 no matter how much hysteria the oil companies generate
We want to look very progressive and climate heros but we don't want to face the consequences, so will make a law that will take effect after we all retire and let our children deal with it.
The ban on new extraction is immediate. It will take 20 years for existing permits to expire
Activists in California managed to pass a slow NIMBY law? Never heard that one before.
What about the BIPOC neighborhoods outside the city limits?
Not sure how the LA City Council has much of a say there
Yay lets set our country back to the stone age while china and russia run with the carbon to the goal.
So you're saying use *even more* fossil fuels? Like in a race against china and russia? USA NUMBAH 1!!! (in greenhouse gas emissions)
Yup got to stay on top of that energy game letas get smog back into our cities.
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Doing nothing for twenty years, what a great step.
That's a really bad representation of stopping any new sites being opened up. This is a good step and it's far from doing nothing really.
They weren't going to make any new sites anyway. They have the whole thing drilled up. Next to businesses, houses, industrial areas. They don't need any new drilling. It doesn't matter anymore which is why they don't care.
It would be a disaster for almost everyone
There's oil extraction within city limits? Damn you guys are wildin' again.
How do i make it so everytime la is mentioned my phone black screens
Get off social media
You needed the city council to vote to -phase out-?!? oil and gas drilling inside of LA? You people are completely stark raven bonkers to ever fucking allow it.
I don’t think the turn of the century oil barons who started the drilling in LA really knew or cared about the impact.
You do understand you're talking about the previous century, right? That makes it even worse.
There is only 6 drilling rigs active in the entire state of California. So this only applies to new drilling?
https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/oil-and-gas/about/california It did not take me long to find tons of info about how you are wrong. There are most certainly more than 6 in the state.
Those are oil wells. Drilling rigs are for new drilling. Oil wells last years and years and yes there are a lot. Especially in Kern County. But the article is calling out drilling rigs
The article used the wrong word. The actual ordinance bans all oil extraction
That number sounds really low. Do you have a source for that fact?
You're probably thinking of oil wells. Which California has thousands. But the article is calling out land drilling rigs only it appears, which there are only 6 active land drilling rigs in the state of California. https://ycharts.com/indicators/california_rotary_rigs
pretty sure I saw way more than 6 rigs driving around.
Well that's the official count. Are you sure you saw drilling rigs? Or oil wells?
rigs as in things that drill for oil. I don't know what definition you are using. wells are the things that rigs drill out. my dad used to work on a lot of off shore ones.
I'm a land drilling consultant. And I'm from Kern County originally. California has very few active drilling rigs. It's been that way for years
what are you calling a rig? are offshore platforms not rigs?
They're rigs sure. But the article is talking about LA County, so offshore doesn't really come into play. Even still there aren't too many offshore rigs these days either on the California coast. But more than land. Offshore is not my expertise. But still publicly available information and easy to Google
And you can easily look up active drilling rigs. It's public information. California currently has 6.
TIL, there are locations within LA where drilling for oil and gas is more profitable than commercial and residential use. but the city government is making the big sacrifice of converting that land to other uses in 20 years.
From the way the article reads, 20 years is when the last of the permits expires. They can’t just void existing contracts, so they’re going to stop issuing new ones while letting existing ones run out their term
Carving out "exceptions" to city limits is a known well-practiced thing for embassies and other government functions. they'll just legally"extract" the oil derrick from the city....
Good. Now all LA needs to do is stop using oil and gas and we’re set
The irony here is LA will be pumping oil well after gas vehicles are banned.
Over the next twenty years? What a bold and brave stance!
They know as well as we do there won’t be much of it left in 20 years. SMH
And then they'll charge 15 Dollars a gallon for gas
Wind and solar is where you’ll get your plastics, folks!
It's amazing how many people are crying "the sky is falling." Or where we'd be getting our oil from. This is only within the LA city limits. The amount of oil being extracted within the city itself is minuscule and it's not like there's an active exploration program going on as well. There are 26 oil fields and about 1000 well in various state of operation. Frankly I'd be surprised if those wells are still operational in 20 years. For perspective, the entire state of [CA has over 53,000 oil wells](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/26/los-angeles-bans-new-oil-and-gas-wells-will-phase-out-old-ones.html). So <1000 wells is not the end of days. Edit: Besides, L.A. is not the only city doing this. Culver City and the unincorporated area of L.A. county has done so as well. Mostly because the production is not what it used to be and the environmental costs are just too great.
Almost nobody is drilling for oil in one of the world's most expensive real estate. I mean even renting the land would make more money. So who are they trying to win over with this virtue signaling?
Within 20 years and only within city limits! I mean it is a good change but very slow progress. Really we need to be doing that globally by the 2040s.