Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced an immediate suspension of permits allowing new hydraulic fracturing and steam-injected oil drilling – the latest in a series of moves in the past week underscoring California’s determination to be seen as a leader in climate change efforts.

“These are necessary steps to strengthen oversight of oil and gas extraction as we phase out our dependence on fossil fuels and focus on clean energy sources,” Newsom said in a statement released by his office.

While Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, also used his job to promote the Golden State as a leader in the effort to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions believed to be a primary cause of global warming, he opposed a fracking moratorium. Brown’s aides noted the economic benefits of being the third-largest oil-producing state – home to 72,000 wells and 350,000-plus good-paying oil-related jobs. Brown may also have been intrigued by disputed reports in 2013 that the Golden State was sitting on massive oil reserves larger than those of Saudi Arabia.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, pushed back hard at Newsom’s assertion that California had no choice but to crack down on unsafe drilling practices.

“Multiple state agencies already validate our protection of health, safety and the environment during production,” she said in a statement. Reheis-Boyd joined several Republican officials in warning of severe economic consequences of what they depicted as an end to new oil drilling.

State may require buffer zones around many oil wells

But the obstacles Newsom plans to add to gas and oil exploration don’t stop with a ban on the two extraction techniques. The Los Angeles Times reported that he “plans to study the possible adoption of buffer zones around oil wells in or near residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals and other facilities that could be exposed to hazardous fumes” – a move with the potential to sharply add to regulatory burdens of owners of the wells.

Other moves that Newsom has announced in the last week include:

• The state will no longer purchase gas-powered sedans. Law-enforcement agencies are exempted.

• The state will only buy vehicles from automakers that agreed to follow California’s vehicle-emission rules rather than the weaker rules backed by the Trump administration. So far, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW have sided with California. General Motors, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Hyundai, Kia and Fiat Chrysler last month said they would follow the weaker federal standards.

• The Newsom administration has formally asked the California Public Utilities Commission to permanently close the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Porter Ranch as soon as feasible. The facility has been the target of intense protests by its neighbors and environmentalists since a 2015 disaster resulted in among the largest releases of methane gas in world history – an immense leak that took nearly four months to stop and forced the evacuation of nearly 3,000 households.

Environmental groups hailed Newsom’s series of moves – especially what they depicted as the beginning of the end of fracking in the state.

Livermore lab experts must OK new fracking permits

But the governor’s announcement left open the possibility that new fracking permits could be – if independent experts from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory attested to their safety.

That’s not necessarily a long shot. Even as greens spent years depicting hydraulic fracturing as dangerous and destructive, several Cabinet members in the Obama administration said it was akin to other heavy industries – mostly safe if properly regulated.

In 2015, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told KQED, the Northern California PBS channel, that local moratoriums on fracking approved by several cities in the state were the “wrong way to go.”

“There is a lot of misinformation about fracking,” she said. “I think that localized efforts or statewide efforts in many cases don’t understand the science behind it and I think there needs to be more science.”

But Newsom said he didn’t agree with this benign view of fracking while campaigning for governor in 2018 and promised a crackdown if elected.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Wednesday explained in a notice to the Federal Register that it will explore the impact of fracking in the state, setting off alarm bells among environmentalists.

“[T]his document announces the beginning of the scoping process and seeks public input on issues and planning criteria related to hydraulic fracturing,” the notice reads.

Specifically, BLM will prepare a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to determine what environmental impacts the technology will have on the region.

The land in question includes “approximately 400,000 acres of public land and an additional 1.2 million acres of Federal mineral estate,” according to the agency, and spans across multiple counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura.

Fracking is a technique by which water, sand and additives are injected deep into the ground at high pressures to crack open rocks and release the oil or gas trapped inside. It’s led to drilling booms in places like Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.

Proponents argue that it’s a safe technology that is increasing America’s energy independence and creating jobs, while opponents say it poses environmental risks and recklessly promotes an energy policy centered around fossil fuels instead of alternative energy resources.

“This step toward opening our beautiful public lands to fracking and drilling is part of the Trump administration’s war on California,” said Clare Lakewood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We desperately need to keep these dirty fossil fuels in the ground. But Trump is hell-bent on sacrificing our health, wildlife and climate to profit big polluters.”

The administration has already faced backlash over similar moves. This spring, for example, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke postponed a sale for leasing public lands for drilling near Livingston, Montana, following heavy outrage due to its proximity to Yellowstone National Park.

“I’ve always said there are places where it is appropriate to develop and where it’s not. This area certainly deserves more study, and appropriately we have decided to defer the sale,” Zinke responded in a March statement.

More broadly, the development is just the latest high-profile fight between California and the Trump administration, as the state has challenged the president’s agenda on nearly every hot button issue, including immigration, climate change and health care. 

And just last week, President Trump issued a series of tweets lambasting the state’s environmental regulations, claiming that the rules are hindering the ability to effectively fight wildfires, remarks that drew wide condemnation from state officials.

It took some time, but a 2011 report by the Federal Energy Information Administration that estimated that California’s Monterey shale underground land mass formation had 15.4 billion barrels of accessible oil and a follow-up study that put the figure at 13.7 billion barrels of oil — about twice as much as the rest of the nation combined — got plenty of folks’ attention. Advances in hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, made extracting the oil cost-effective.

Excitement about a possible oil bonanza was stoked by a 2012 City Journal analysis. That continued to build in early 2013 after word spread that oil companies were already buying land above the 1,750-square-mile shale formation, which extends across much of central California to the Santa Barbara-San Luis Obispo coast. Then came a 2013 USC study that estimated development of the Monterey shale could boost the state’s economic activity by 14.3 percent and had the potential to generate nearly $25 billion in new state tax revenue by 2020.

In January 2014, Gov. Jerry Brown made headlines when he said he was open to allowing fracking in California, getting blasted by environmentalists as a result. Fracking, which involves the use of underground water cannons to eradicate rock formations and allow access to previously unreachable oil and natural gas reserves, has been targeted by green groups on safety and health grounds for a decade.

But it’s been all downhill ever since for those enthusiastic about oil exploration in the Golden State. It’s not just that low oil prices have left energy companies facing a “world of hurt,” in the words of the Houston Chronicle, and without the resources to pursue large new drilling programs in California or elsewhere. It’s specific, daunting developments.

Last week, Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald halted plans to allow fracking of the Monterey shale on public lands in central California and rebuked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for failing to do a full review of the environmental effects of the extraction technique.

In July 2015, state officials released final rules on fracking that were billed as the toughest in the nation. They were seen as much more onerous than the tough-but-manageable draft rules released in fall 2013 to the applause of energy companies.

And in May 2014, the federal Energy Information Administration — the same agency that triggered the interest in the Monterey shale in the first place — cut its estimate of how much oil could be recovered from the underground rock formation by 96 percent, to 600 million barrels.

Obama administration still backs fracking in state

Who remains enthusiastic about oil exploration in California? U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who last year criticized local governments in the Golden State for adopting fracking bans.

“There is a lot of misinformation about fracking,” Jewell told KQED in an interview. “I think that localized efforts or statewide efforts in many cases don’t understand the science behind it and I think there needs to be more science.”

That may surprise some, given the Obama administration’s aggressive pursuit of a global climate-change strategy that is based on much less use of fossil fuels. But President Obama campaigned for re-election in 2012 on an “all of the above” strategy for energy production and has continued with the approach in his second term.

Jewell endorsed the fracking plan for California public land that was blocked last week by the Los Angeles federal judge. The Bureau of Land Management, the agency the judge criticized, is part of the Interior Department.

Here’s the Bakersfield Californian’s account:

Brown launched a no-nonsense defense of hydraulic fracturing on “Meet the Press” Sunday, dismissing host Chuck Todd’s concerns that the practice uses too much water and could be dangerous. Brown noted California oil companies have been fracking for decades, safely, and that the practice does not use excessive amounts of water. He also reminded Todd that California imports 70 percent of its annual oil consumption, and banning it would hardly make a dent in consumption but force the state to import yet more oil on rail cars.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in sharp contrast, has accepted the contention of greens that fracking is a grave environmental threat. That California’s governor parts with Cuomo and sides with energy companies led liberal bloggers Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine to vent on their Calbuzz blog. This is from an item entitled, “Say It Isn’t So: Is Jerry Brown Really A Fracking Whore?”

On the one hand, he calls for – and even leads – a “crusade to protect our climate”; on the other he allows oil companies to engage in a practice that science and common sense insist is destructive, wasteful and unsafe to the environment and to Californians.

So, more in sadness than in anger, we must ask: Why is Brown acting a fracking whore?

Quid Pro Quo? Oh No. Surely, it can’t be that Occidental Petroleum gave $500,000 in 2012 to help Brown pass his crucial Proposition 30, which raised taxes on wealthy Californians and increased spending on public education. That would seem oh too quid quo pro for this political Jeremiah who self-righteously thunders that climate change denial “borders on the immoral.”

And yet, whenever he is challenged on his approval of fracking – he called it a “fabulous economic opportunity” in May 2013 – Brown slips the punch by citing all the other good stuff he’s set in motion to combat climate change.

Governor blasted for ‘lack of integrity’

On Friday, a Huffington Post writer — Paul Y. Song, a California physician who once helped advise the Brown administration — weighed in with a post headlined,”Governor Brown, We Urge You to Do What Is Right for Our Water and Our Environment!”

The Governor stated on Meet the Press last Sunday that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the drought is no reason to ban fracking.

Worse, while Gov. Brown called out Senator Mitch McConnell for advocating on behalf of coal development amid concerns about climate change and drought, Brown refuses to stand up to fossil fuel development in California in the face of irrefutable evidence that fracking wastes California’s water. In so doing, Governor Brown sells out the needs of the people of California in order to serve the greed of the oil industry.

The consequences of Gov. Brown’s failure to halt fracking and protect California’s fragile water supply does not just represent a lack of political integrity, but bears dire consequences for California’s future.

Neither the Calbuzz or Huffington Post pieces noted that President Barack Obama and his administration have a long record of arguing that fracking is safe and welcoming its success in triggering the brown energy boom.

The administration is also in the process of adopting rules to govern fracking on leased federal lands.

In a January interview with KQED, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell specifically knocked California fracking critics as misinformed.

This is unacceptable to greens in California, who broadly reject the Obama administration’s conclusion that fracking is safe. Instead, they depict it as ruinous to the environment, as causing earthquakes and as using up enormous amounts of water that could be put to much better use.

The latter argument — because of its specific implications for drought-wracked California — is a constant presence on state message boards, letters to the editor and talk radio.

But some crucial research is rarely if ever cited. In a 2010 report, Harvard scientists concluded that energy produced by fracking appeared to use less water than the same amount of energy produced by conventional fossil-fuel extraction. “The increased role of shale gas in the U.S. energy sector could result in reduced water consumption,” wrote authors Erik Mielke, Laura Diaz Anadon and Venkatesh Narayanamurti. According to the energy industry, that’s just what has happened in the five years since.

Some big drillers no longer use freshwater

One reason is that technological advances have made it easier for drillers to recycle water than ever. This is from a 2013 Reuters story:

MERTZON, Texas, Nov 21 (Reuters) – At a dusty Texas oilfield, Apache Corp has eliminated its reliance on what arguably could be the biggest long-term constraint for fracking wells in the arid western United States: scarce freshwater.

For only one well, millions of gallons of water are used for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the process that has helped reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil over the past five years by cracking rock deep underground to release oil and gas.

In Irion County, where Apache is drilling dozens of Wolfcamp shale wells in the Permian Basin, the company is meeting its water needs for hydraulic fracturing by using brackish water from the Santa Rosa aquifer and recycling water from wells and fracking using chemicals.

The company’s approach could have broader significance for areas prone to drought. Apache, which has the most rigs running in the Permian, the oil-rich region that spans 59 Texas counties, says the model can cut costs and truck traffic rattling small towns stretched by the country’s drilling boom.

“We’re not using freshwater out here,” Lucian Wray, production manager for Apache’s South Permian region, said of the company’s Barnhart operating area, which is run out of a former hunting lodge. “We are recycling 100 percent of our produced water. We don’t dispose of any of it.”

“Produced water” is a byproduct of oil and natural gas drilling. “Flowback” water is the fluid pushed out of a well during fracking. Apache is recycling both types, which are typically trucked away and put into underground disposal wells.

Some drillers frack without water entirely

And some drillers have stopped using water entirely. This is from a 2013 Houston Chronicle story:

The use of one precious fluid — water — to recover another — oil — chafes in dry country. Rivers and groundwater are receding in Texas for lack of rain and over-pumping just when the demand for water in new oil and gas fields is growing.

Now one exploration and production company in San Antonio is fracturing its wells mostly without water, using gas liquids instead, in a practice that’s beginning to spread. …

BlackBrush Oil & Gas LP is using a butane-rich mix for fracking after being confounded by many of the same obstacles other energy companies face in buying, moving and disposing of large amounts of water.

“Ranchers don’t want to give up their water,” said Jasen Walshak, production manager at BlackBrush.

The term gas liquids refers here to three fluids – propane, butane and pentane – that occur together with natural gas. They’re extracted from natural gas and sold, mostly as fuels.

Switching to gas liquids also seems to reduce controversy for BlackBrush.

“People don’t see water transfer lines all over the place,” Walshak said, referring to the yards and miles of pipe that move water from rural wells to oilfield tanks and rig trucks.

Environmentalists concerned about fossil fuels and global warming are certain to see a downside to these new approaches to fracturing even if they lead to far less water use.

But at the least, these developments show that energy exploration firms are listening to their critics. They realize that it’s in their interest to counteract the gripes about water use that are a staple of much fracking criticism.

The worst two examples of this conscious decision to leave out perhaps the strongest argument that pro-fracking forces can offer were in the Sacramento Bee and the L.A. Times.

In 2013, the Bee’s Pulizer-winning environmental reporter, Tom Knudson, wrote a voluminous, harshly critical look at fracking and California. He never mentioned that the Obama administration believes it to be just like another heavy industry that can be made safe enough with proper regulation.

Also in 2013, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell held a news conference announcing rules for fracking on federal land. The New York Times noted that Jewell’s remarks included pointed criticism of those who depicted fracking as unsafe. The Los Angeles Times covered the same press conference. Rather incredibly, it ignored Jewell’s remarks and instead quoted an oil industry figure as saying fracking was safe.

Cabinet member hits fracking ‘misinformation’

Now Jewell may have made it close to impossible for the California media to continue ignoring the Obama administration’s view by weighing in with KQED on what she sees as the poor logic behind local fracking bans.

President Obama’s chief custodian of federal lands says local and regional bans on fracking are taking regulation of oil and gas recovery in the wrong direction.

“I would say that is the wrong way to go,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told KQED in an exclusive interview. “I think it’s going to be very difficult for industry to figure out what the rules are if different counties have different rules.”

In November, two California counties added themselves to a growing list of local bans on hydraulic fracturing. Voters approved measures in San Benito and Mendocino Counties by wide margins.

“There are a lot of fears out there in the general public and that manifests itself with local laws or regional laws,” Jewell said.

The recent move by New York to extend a statewide ban does not sit especially well with Jewell, who, as a former petroleum engineer, has hands-on experience with fracking.

“There is a lot of misinformation about fracking,” Jewell said. “I think that localized efforts or statewide efforts in many cases don’t understand the science behind it and I think there needs to be more science.”

Will the Bee, the Times and other California newspapers ignore this latest affirmation of the Obama administration’s view that fracking is not the devil?

I don’t see how they can — even though it will remind people how long they’ve covered up the views of Jewell, Obama and the administration in general.

HOUSTON — Falling gasoline prices have sent oil company stocks tumbling, but oil experts say the boom in American energy production shows no signs of slowing down, keeping the market flush with crude and gasoline prices low.

Even after a drop of as much as 25 percent in oil prices since early summer, several government and private reports say that it would take a drop of $10 to $20 a barrel more — to as low as $60 a barrel — to slow production even modestly. …

The Energy Department this week reported that only 4 percent of shale production in North Dakota, Texas and other states needed an oil price above $80 a barrel for producers to break even on investments. One reason is that improved efficiencies in hydraulic fracturing and other modern production techniques have increased the output of each new well month after month in recent years.

Did you note the matter-of-fact, hysteria-free way the NYT refers to fracking? Quite pleasant compared with California’s newspapers, where all enviro reporters with one exception never even mention that the Obama administration considers it safe. Or that the environmental movement basically didn’t say squat about hydraulic fracturing — using underground water cannons to blast away rock and access oil and natural gas reserves — for the first 60 years it was used.

Only when fracking became far more efficient (and cleaner) in the past six or seven years has it emerged as something greens love to hate — and even then the greenest president in history won’t buy in.

Fracking: Sit back and enjoy the CA freakout

So as the U.S. oil boom continues, California residents who like good news and who don’t like the quasi-religious extremism of many environmentalists will have to listen to evidence-free wailing from people who benefit enormously from fracking. They’ll shout themselves hoarse about its evils and pursue local bans, as seen in various communities around the state.

This would normally annoy me because I think fracking is being slandered and that it would be great for California. But I’m now doubtful it will ever come to pass in a major way in a place where the green religion is so strong. Anyone who started a petition drive for an anti-fracking California ballot initiative would have millions of dollars quickly pouring in from the usual billionaire lefties. I’m surprised some lefty consultant doesn’t start up such a drive without even having a client first; it wouldn’t take long to find a deep-pockets patron.

So instead, I will choose to enjoy the discomfiture of CA greens as fracking continues to be one of the world’s great economic phenomena, despite their stern and pious disapproval. Outside of California, billionaire lefties don’t stand a chance against public opinion (very, very, very pro-cheap energy) and Big Oil. Schadenfreude is going to be fun.

But I will also enjoy the CA green freakout because the longer that fracking goes on without anything close to a Love Canal-level enviro disaster, the tougher it will be for the public to take seriously the sky-is-falling rhetoric from fracking haters.

The traditional, much dirtier, much less efficient version of hydraulic fracturing that was used from the 1940s until 2006 or so didn’t lead to a Love Canal. If one happened now, it would in goofy ways be akin to a religious miracle.

Rarely do accounts offer stark statistics that illustrate just how big the boom has been. Thankfully, a new American Enterprise Institute analysis does so in dramatic fashion.

In a dozen years, North Dakota went from being one of the nation’s poorest states, grouped with some Southern states, New Mexico and West Virginia, to one of the richest, trailing only another energy giant — Alaska. That’s a pretty stunning success story — comparable to Japan’s and West Germany’s delayed post-World War II rebound in the 1960s and early 1970s, or to South Korea’s emergence in the last 20 years as a nation that’s wealthier than most of Europe.

Here are the details from AEI:

“In 2000, North Dakota was the 8th least economically prosperous US states, ranking No. 43 in the country for per-capita real GDP that year … with GDP per person ($35,738) that was more than 20% below the national average ($44,808). In that year, North Dakota was a relatively minor oil-producing state, ranking ninth among the US states for oil production … .

“Starting around 2007, private oil drillers started successfully drilling for shale oil in North Dakota, thanks to advances in drilling and extraction technologies that allowed ‘petropreneurs’ to finally tap into oceans of previously inaccessible unconventional oil in the Bakken oil fields in the western part of the state. … In just the three years between 2007 and 2010, North Dakota moved up 18 places in state rankings for per-capita real GDP, from No. 30 in 2007 to No. 12 in 2010. …

“After more than doubling from 2007 to 2010, annual oil production in the Peace Garden State more than doubled again in the two-year period from 2010 to 2012 … North Dakota was producing so much shale oil in the Bakken that it surpassed both Alaska and California to become the nation’s second-largest oil-producing state in 2012, behind only Texas. … by 2012, the energy-driven stimulus to the state’s economy moved North Dakota to the No. 2 spot in the country for per-capita real GDP at $64,871 behind only Alaska at $72,281, and 33.6% above the national average of $48,567. 

“In 2013, for the second year in a row, North Dakota again ranked No. 2 among US states for real GDP per capita at $68,804 … more than 40% above the national average.”

California could enjoy a similar miracle

The AEI number-crunching bears huge relevance to California, where the Monterey Shale’s oil reserves in the Central Valley and central Pacific coastal counties are believed to be several times as big as those in the Bakken Shale.

Federal energy officials have recently been more downbeat on California’s chances of accessing those reserves than they used to be, allegedly because of new concerns about geologic obstacles that they didn’t used to have. This doesn’t make sense — energy companies are better than ever at overcoming such obstacles. But it wasn’t all that surprising, given how often green bureaucrats pursue their own agendas.

Unsurprisingly, Occidental and other oil energy-exploration firms are far less apprehensive and continue to show great interest in expanding fracking of California’s shale. In its reports to shareholders — reports that Occidental must answer to the SEC for if they are judged deceptive — the energy company has estimated that California has more than 20 billion barrels of recoverable oil in its shale.

That’s more than twice as much as the rest of the U.S. combined. That’s 30 percent higher than the highest federal estimate before officials suddenly began to see geologic obstacles they hadn’t before.

2.8 million new CA jobs. Repeat: 2.8 million new CA jobs

That translates into a ton of money, to put it modestly. If anti-fossil fuel religious crusaders could be overcome, what might that mean for California? The USC report from March 2013 still seems like a good guide.

“Development of oil-shale deposits through Central California using fracking and other techniques may boost the state’s economic activity by as much as 14.3 percent, a University of Southern California study said.

“Such drilling in the Monterey Shale Formation, in addition to increasing per-capita gross domestic product, may add as much as $24.6 billion in state and local tax revenue and as many as 2.8 million jobs by 2020, according to the report … .”

Those numbers seemed outlandish to some folks when they came out 16 months ago. If you look at the AEI’s report on North Dakota, they don’t seem outlandish at all.

I have heard that some journos think my criticism is unfair and/or that I am a loopy ideologue. My response: However I feel (or however you feel) about fracking, isn’t it an obligation for California newspapers to relate how the, yunno, FEDERAL GOVERNMENT feels about its safety?

Of course it is.

This weekend, I revved up Nexis to see it the media blackout continues. I searched for stories that mentioned “California” and “fracking” from June 14, 2013, to June 14, 2014:

Times, Bee and Chronicle fracking coverage

I found 132 stories in the Los Angeles Times.

How many mentioned the Obama administration considered fracking safe?

One — a June 21, 2013 op-ed by Rock Zierman, CEO of the California Independent Petroleum Assn.

I found 124 stories in the Sacramento Bee.

How many mentioned the Obama administration considered fracking safe?

One — a March 30, 2014, op-ed by Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association.

The Bee ran a piece from McClatchy’s D.C. bureau in late November 2013 that didn’t even raise the question of fracking’s safety; it just pointed out how widely used it was and how it was transforming the economy of several states.

So I guess that one counts, giving the Bee two stories that give the Obama perspective on fracking safety.

I found 61 stories in the San Francisco Chronicle.

How many mentioned the Obama administration considered fracking safe?

Two, by staff reporter David R. Baker. Another Baker piece describes Obama as a fracking supporter.

So that gives the Chronicle three.

So there were 317 stories mentioning “California” and “fracking” for the past year, and only six mentioned that the Obama administration considers if safe — and two of those were op-eds from oil trade association executives and one was a wire story.

So only Baker’s three stories amount to staff-produced journalism on California and fracking from the state’s three most influential newspapers that noted the profoundly important fact that the greenest administration in U.S. history sides with those who say fracking is safe.

Draw your own conclusions. Sure looks like groupthink to me.

Green, please-the-Sierra-Club groupthink.

California’s oil industry is celebrating the defeat of a bill that would have placed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing — but warned that the fracking war is far from over.

Senate Bill 1132 by Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, failed 18-16 on the Senate floor May 28. Four Democrats joined Republicans in voting against it, while three Democrats sat out the vote. The bill was reconsidered the next day, resulting in a loss of two more Democratic votes.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, sent out a congratulatory email to supporters last week:

“The legislation would have banned hydraulic fracturing and other well stimulation technologies, putting existing petroleum industry jobs at risk and preventing the creation of potentially tens of thousands of others – not to mention depriving Californians of much-needed state and local tax revenues and enhanced energy security.

“Not surprisingly, anti-oil special interests who fed the public, the state Legislature, and media egregious misinformation about hydraulic fracturing and other oil extraction techniques have vowed to continue their efforts in Sacramento and throughout California’s local communities. WSPA will continue to push for common sense legislation that balances environmental protection with domestic energy security, job creation, and economic development.”

Mitchell: Big Oil ‘polluting for profit’

Mitchell did indeed vow to keep up the fight against an oil-and-gas drilling process that she believes pollutes the environment.

“[She] is proud of the bill’s successful journey in raising awareness around public safety, fossil fuels and environmental justice,” Mitchell said in a press release.  “Although the bill fell short of passage, she is confident that the movement to re-assess fracking, acidization and other well stimulation methods will continue to grow until the public’s concerns are thoroughly addressed.

“We have the momentum, this issue’s gone viral nationally, and it’s just a matter of time before the dangers of fracking prompt people to put it on pause until its safety can be established. When the impacts on the public of a for-profit endeavor are unknown, we try it out first in minority neighborhoods – assuming low vigilance and the need to bring in jobs makes safety irrelevant.

“But we’ve put big industry on notice: That ploy won’t fly forever. People’s neighborhoods aren’t fodder for fracking, environmental justice must come, and one day soon the vote to refrain from polluting for profit will prevail!”

State, feds: Fracking not a danger

But the California agency charged with oversight of fracking assures that more than a half-century of hydraulic fracturing in the country have shown it to not be an environmental danger.

“Hydraulic fracturing was first used in 1947 in a well in Kansas,” states the California Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. “Since then, hydraulic fracturing has become a regular practice to tap into previously unrecoverable reserves, or to stimulate increased production from existing oil or gas wells in the United States.

“In California, hydraulic fracturing has been used as a production stimulation method for more than 30 years with no reported damage to the environment.”

The Obama administration also has long depicted fracking as safe. In May 2013, at a news conference on draft rules for fracking on 700 million acres of federal land, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell defended the drilling process: “I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.”

SB1132 came hard on the heels of another fracking crackdown bill, SB4, which was approved by the Legislature last year and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. It increases regulations on fracking, including disclosure of the composition and disposition of fracking fluids to state regulators.

It also requires a study be completed by the end of this year on “the hazards and risks that fracking poses to natural resources and public, occupational, and environmental health and safety,” according to the bill’s legislative analysis. “No permits for fracking would be allowed to be issued after Jan. 1, 2015, unless the study is completed and peer reviewed.”

SB1132 would have extended that study an additional six months, and imposed additional governmental reviews before fracking could resume in the state.

Sharp disagreements in Senate floor debate

Democrats and Republicans debated the bill May 28 on the Senate floor.

“SB1132 puts a temporary moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and acidization until they are proven safe by an exhaustive study that looks at many of the concerns and complaints commonly made by the citizens who live and work near the oil fields,” said Mitchell.

She dismissed concerns about potential job loss, saying the oil industry claims that only a small minority of wells are fracked. And she cited media reports that the oil recovery potential of California’s Monterey Shale formation has been cut by 96 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“SB1132 simply calls for a ‘time out,’ if you will, a temporary moratorium pending verification that fracking and acidization methods are safe,” said Mitchell. “Along with many of you, I have no desire to increase our over-reliance on foreign oil. However, the safety of oil drilling is fundamentally an environmental justice issue that I believe we must view with great scrutiny.”

Jackson: No need to ‘frack, frack, frack’

She was backed by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, who said that fracking has caused earthquakes in Ohio and degraded water quality in Texas.

“There would be no harm in hitting the pause button and evaluating specifically and more independently what the impacts are of this process on our water quality, air quality, the public health of people in surrounding communities,” said Jackson. “There is no urgency to frack, frack, frack. Let us be cautious. Let us be circumspect. And let us have the information that we need in order to determine whether we should continue a procedure that has demonstrated negative results in other parts of the country.”

Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said that 70 percent of Californians support a fracking moratorium. And he noted that other states have adopted moratoriums.

Two Republican senators representing inland valley areas pointed out that their districts are still suffering double-digit unemployment, which will worsen with this year’s drought.

GOP response cites economic potential, need for fuel

Sen. Tom Berryhill, R-Stanislaus, discussed a trip to North Dakota last year where the economic contrast could not have been more stark due to that state’s oil and gas drilling boom.

“It was mind-boggling,” he said. “There was ‘help wanted’ on every corner and every small business. It was a tremendous opportunity to get people back to work. This technology has the potential to create thousands of jobs and a second gold rush to the local economy in the state of California that we haven’t seen in years.”

Sen. Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, challenged Mitchell.

“Californians require 44 million gallons of gasoline a day,” said Fuller. “Our state refineries provide all of that gasoline, and they must be supplied with oil from somewhere. My question for the author is: What other methods or new technology does this bill propose to use to backfill the lost oil production in California? Tankers, rail, rationing or something that I don’t know?

Mitchell responded, “This bill does not propose to offer an alternative.” The time for that is if the study determines that fracking is unsafe, she added.

That did not satisfy Fuller, who said, “My area produces about 80 percent of the oil and gas. Most of those wells that are being fracked have been fracked for many, many years. Most of them are in an oil well footprint where there’s no groundwater underneath, there’s no residential houses nearby. And they haven’t had safety violations.

“I think that we’ll get [safe fracking] without having to suffer loss of jobs and tremendous economic upheaval in my area. Some of the small cities in my area have 30 percent unemployment now. We’re about to head into a drought in August, and that will probably double [unemployment], because the last time we had a drought there was 30 percent unemployment just from the drought. To have even a day’s loss of this work, which are very good wages and very good health benefits, is absolutely crushing for us.”

Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Tehama, argued that Mitchell’s bill puts up so many obstacles to completion and certification of the study, that it would amount to a de facto ban on fracking.

“Would it affect the citizens of California?” he asked. “Absolutely. We cannot conserve our way to the future in either water or energy.”

Mitchell: You’re crying fire

Mitchell accused her bill’s opponents of being alarmists on the threat of lost jobs.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to cry fire in a crowded theater when we are unable to quantify the actual statistical job loss based on the narrow parameters of this bill,” she said. “We as policy makers have to make a very, very difficult, delicate decision: employment versus public health and safety. I appreciate the challenges many of the districts are experiencing. I hope you appreciate the challenges my constituents are facing who live in very, very dangerous close proximity to wells that are being fracked and where acidization is being used.”

Reheis-Boyd discussed in her blog her organization’s next steps, now that there has been a temporary truce in California’s fracking war:

“[The] defeat of Senate Bill 1132, legislation that would have imposed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and other well stimulation technologies, clears a path for a concerted and collaborative effort to fully implement new statewide regulations embodied in Senate Bill 4.

“The SB 4 regulations put into place a robust set of monitoring, disclosure, testing, land use and research requirements that ensure hydraulic fracturing in California is conducted safely and without harm to the environment. But there is still much to be done to finalize these new regulations, and the petroleum industry is going to be a constructive partner in getting them accomplished.

“For example, we are working with the State Water Resources Control Board and regional water boards to develop groundwater monitoring criteria and planning required by SB 4. Once finalized, these new requirements will give us the data necessary to demonstrate hydraulic fracturing and other well stimulation technologies are not adversely impacting California’s precious water supplies.

“We are working with the California Air Resources Board and regional air boards to ensure air quality concerns are addressed as required by SB 4. We are working with the Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources to develop the in-depth CEQA analysis of well stimulation operations also required by SB 4. And we look forward to the findings of the science-based study of hydraulic fracturing – yet another requirement of SB 4. …

“As Governor Brown has noted, close to a third of the new wells drilled in California are hydraulically fractured as a way to improve their productivity. These wells are an important part of California’s ongoing, conventional oil production that supplies 37 per cent of our daily petroleum needs. 

“The more than 100,000 men and women directly employed in oil production and transportation in California appreciate the Legislature’s support for the work they do and welcome the opportunity to move forward under the guidance of SB 4 regulations.”