Harmful Neighborhood Drilling in California

Are you living near an oil and gas well?

Are you one of the millions of Californians living less than half a mile from an oil and gas well?

Para obtener más información sobre la perforación en el vecindario >>

For years, public health experts have known that living, working, or playing near oil and gas drilling can be linked to a host of harmful health impacts including asthma, respiratory diseases, preterm births, and even cancer.

Use this interactive map to see if you live near toxic drilling.

Health Impacts from Oil and Gas Drilling

Signage among oil wells in the Kern River Oil Field warns that it is an environmentally sensitive area, home to endangered plants and animals in Bakersfield, California. Fossil fuel infrastructure in Arvin, California. Kern County, whose population is over half Latinx, is home to a bulk of California's oil production and agriculture. Facing the simultaneous challenges of fossil fuel racism and being in the center of the climate crisis, Kern County farmworker communities face interconnected and deliberate capitalist crises on all fronts.

While California is known for its natural beauty and environmental protection, it is also home to a toxic legacy of oil and gas. For decades, cheap oil fueled the California economy but it came with a huge cost. Even when operating by the book, oil and gas wells can leak volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and a toxic cocktail of chemicals — all harmful to human health.

That is why for years, studies have confirmed that being near oil and gas wells is linked to increased risk of numerous diseases and ailments, including respiratory problems and cancer. And our most vulnerable family members — children, elderly, and pregnant people — are the ones most at risk.

Too many Californians are not aware of this toxic threat while more than 2 million live within half a mile from it — the vast majority of whom are low-income, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and immigrant. This disproportionate impact from the extraction of oil and gas is ongoing environmental racism in California.

But that’s not all. Too often when oil companies are done sucking up the last drops of oil, they simply walk away, leaving behind rusting idle wells littered across the state that also leak toxic emissions. Today, California has approximately 40,000 idle wells and too little accountability to ensure oil companies clean up the mess anytime soon.

Solutions Are Within Reach

Activists gather near Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles, one of the largest contiguous urban oil fields in the country, to urge the Governor of California to take action to phase out fossil fuels, beginning with those within 2500 feet of homes and other sensitive sites.

Californians should not be forced to live and work near oil drilling, nor should we be responsible for cleaning up the century of mess left by companies who have simply walked away.

For more than a decade, environmental justice organizations and coalitions in California, including Greenpeace USA, have been bringing frontline communities together and demanding that lawmakers deliver commonsense public health protections from oil and gas drilling, as well as accountability for oil and gas companies formerly or presently doing business in California.

Progress has been painstakingly slow, but there is movement.

In September 2022, Governor Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 1137, a bill that prevents permits from being issued to drill new oil and gas wells and rework existing wells within 3,200 feet of where people live, work, and play, as well as establishes pollution controls and safety measures designed to reduce harm.
In 2023, California regulators only approved 25 permits for new oil and gas wells in California — a more than 95% drop from previous years.
Also in 2023, Attorney General Bonta and Governor Newsom sued the largest oil companies in the world for the decades of lies and deception and for the damages that the climate crisis has cost the state.
Additionally in 2023, Governor Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 1167, a bill that closes a loophole that frequently allows companies to own idle wells and avoid paying to clean them up. Now oil companies taking new ownership of existing wells in California have to post a bond covering the full price to eventually plug and remediate the wells.
In 2024, two bills were introduced in the California Legislature: Assembly Bill 1866 to speed up the plugging and remediation of idle wells across the state and Assembly Bill 1497 focused on Big Oil paying for proven climate damage and offering direct funds to communities hit hardest by the climate crisis.

All huge steps. All reason to keep pushing forward and demanding change. But with oil and gas lobbyists doing whatever they can to weaken (and even roll back) any protections, there is still much to be done to ensure California enforces these laws and puts policies in place where people are valued above profits.