Big Oil won a major victory on September 13 when the California Legislature passed Governor Gavin Newsom’s bill, S.B. 237, as part of a controversial “climate” package that greenlights tens of thousands of new oil and gas drilling permits in Kern County over the next decade with no further environmental review. The bill passed as a last minute “gut and amend” measure at the end of the legislative session, truncating public participation.

S.B. 237 exempts oil drilling in Kern County from the landmark California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for the next 10 years, including allowing the rubber stamping of up to 20,000 new wells.

“In addition, it sets the stage for loosening gasoline pollution requirements at the behest of refineries, which would worsen air pollution across the state,” according to a statement by Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “It’s senseless and horrifying that California just gave its seal of approval to this reckless ‘drill, baby, drill’ bill,” said Kretzmann. “This vote is a deep betrayal of Californians’ trust and values. Lawmakers went behind closed doors and gutted our environmental and health protections to benefit Big Oil. The sad truth is that more drilling will increase pollution and climate-fueled heatwaves, wildfires and floods but it won’t do a thing about gas prices.”

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