Why the Arroyo Grande oil field is ground zero in statewide oil strategy
By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
The Center for Biological Diversity has drawn attention to events unfolding in Price Canyon and the Arroyo Grande oil field, where Freeport MacMoRan's dumping of oil drilling wastewater into a protected aquifer is serving as a statewide test case.
In so doing, they have drawn predictable ire from a predictable source (“Oil industry spokesman: Facts should win out over fearmongering”).
The industry p.r. offensive, helpfully printed on April Fool’s Day and bylined by the wonderfully named Rock Zierman, CEO of the California Independent Petroleum Association, assured Tribune readers that there’s no cause for alarm because “what’s really happening is state and federal regulators are updating boundaries for the majority of the oil fields in California, including Arroyo Grande, in accordance with the most current geologic information available.”
Any time you see an argument that A) uses derogatory adjectives in lieu of citing one word of the argument it is supposedly refuting, and B) can itself be refuted by the simple expedient of going back to that original argument to see for yourself what it said, concerns should arise.
In addition to claiming that “the review process underway is simply intended to update these 33-year-old boundaries to reflect current knowledge,” Zierman solemnly adds that “state and federal regulators closely monitor produced water reinjection operations” and these operations are “protecting the environment.” This goes beyond spin and into a realm of breathtaking denial, seeking to erase from the record events that Mr. Zierman cannot be unaware of.
Left out of his narrative of “what’s really happening” is the reason for all that boundary updating: The 2015 discovery that the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources had for years been allowing thousands of oil wells to inject drilling waste directly into protected aquifers, a violation of the law and a threat to groundwater across the state, and a practice DOGGR allowed to continue after the EPA told them this was a problem.
After the news broke, DOGGR responded with a plan to allow the continuation and gradual phase-out of the admittedly illegal injection of oil wastewater into potential underground sources of drinking water rather than ordering an immediate halt to the practice.
CBD and the Sierra Club responded by suing DOGGR.
It’s not uncommon to see industry representatives, when they sense that reality has them at a disadvantage, mischaracterizing an opponent’s argument in order to shift it onto ground where they think they can win. Zierman claims that “the CBD argues against water reinjection,” not the specific illegal practice at issue in our lawsuit and ongoing in Price Canyon.
What CBD and Sierra Club are opposing, and what Mr. Zierman is trying to defend without actually having to say so, are those new regulations that allow DOGGR to either legalize an illegal practice or otherwise take nearly two years to shut down those injection well operations that are so egregious no amount of boundary updating can legitimize them.
This situation came about because in 2011 Governor Brown fired state regulators who were taking the environmental oversight of oil field operations seriously, replacing them with an industry-friendly official tasked with overseeing DOGGR in speeding up the permit process so as to maximize oil production. He performed up to expectations, cranking out permits at a rapid clip by ignoring inconveniences like the Safe Drinking Water Act. That’s what created the status quo that Zierman is defending on the grounds that compelling DOGGR and oil companies to obey the law would bring about the apocalypse.
Or as DOGGR has actually argued – and Mr. Zierman obviously agrees -- “the oil industry’s long-term business plans might be affected if required to comply with existing state and federal law.”
Those would be the state and federal laws created to protect California’s drinking water, which might seem to be an especially good idea in the teeth of an epic drought.
That’s what’s really happening.