The Brief

L.A. city and county are facing a strange limbo in their efforts to end oil drilling.

Local rules to phase out oil drilling have to be repealed so that new ones in line with state law can be enacted. But in the meantime, oil companies can operate much as they have for decades — and residents are urging the city and other regulators to do more to curtail activities they say put their health at risk.

The latest development came Friday, when the Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to repeal a 2022 law to phase out oil drilling in the city over the next 20 years. It comes after the same move by the county earlier this month. Both jurisdictions have faced lawsuits over their oil phaseout rules, brought by oil companies that argue the rules usurp state law.

One of those lawsuits led to the city’s ordinance being overturned in late 2024.

Counterintuitively, the repeal is part of the city’s ongoing effort to end reliance on fossil fuels. That’s because they have to repeal and then reintroduce the phaseout ordinance after a state law that went into effect this year that explicitly gave local governments the authority to regulate drilling within their jurisdictions.

L.A. city accounts for about 1.3% of the state’s total oil production, and that production, here and across the state, has trended downward since the early 1980s.

A graphic of where oil and gas is produced in California, created by one of the consultants, CJM Petroleum Consulting Inc., that the city of L.A. hired to study the feasibility of phasing out oil.

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Courtesy CJM Petroleum Consulting Inc.

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Three long-awaited studies have found the majority of oil companies operating in the city have already recouped the costs of their initial investments, or will in the relatively near future.

The reports, called amortization studies, were carried out by three independent contractors and analyzed public well and economic data.

A more conservative oil phaseout scenario, developed by consulting firm Baker & O'Brien, Inc. for the city of L.A., shows that many oil and gas wells in the city could be phased out within a period of 20 years.

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Courtesy Baker & O'Brien, Inc.

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They found that some of the well sites in the densest parts of the city, such as the Murphy drill site in South L.A., owned by E&B Natural Resources Inc.; the Warren E&P, Inc. drill site in Wilmington with over 230 wells; and the Packard site owned by E&B in Wilshire Vista, could recoup costs within five years. However other sites, such as those operated by the California Resources Corporation in Wilmington, could take 40 years to recoup costs.

Those time frames mean decades more of the health effects research has shown in communities closest to oil operations. People living near oil wells are more likely to have higher rates of asthma, preterm births and cancer. Extracting fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal is also the leading driver of human-caused climate change, which, for example, made January’s fires even worse.

About a third of L.A. County residents live a mile or less from a drilling rig, and communities of color are more likely to live closer to that infrastructure: A 2017 UCLA survey found that Black people were 44% more likely to live near oil and gas wells, Asian communities were 38%, and Latinos 37%, compared with 31% of whites.

L.A. city is expected to introduce a new phaseout ordinance this year.

In the meantime, communities living closest to oil drilling are calling for additional health and safety protections.

Acid maintenance

One effort involves halting what’s called “acid maintenance,” when oil companies inject chemicals into wells in order to dissolve mineral buildup and thus improve production.

Oil companies have told the city that the chemicals are mostly made up of “weak hydrochloric acid,” but some community members worry there are more harmful chemicals involved.

Richard Parks stands across the street from the Murphy drill site in South L.A.

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Jeremy Lindenfeld

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“ We have seen ambient fumes from this kind of work be so intense that they have burned to a brown crisp the plants outside the drill site on the downwind corner, so we're very concerned about this work and its impact on our children and families,” said Richard Parks, longtime South L.A. resident and president of nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership, which for years has worked to end drilling at the Murphy drill site, operated by E&B Resources and linked to reduced lung function in nearby residents according to 2021 research by USC.

Parks added that when acid maintenance occurs, workers wear “ head-to-toe protective gear, face shields, gas sensors on their helmets. And they're working behind red danger tape. But outside on the other side of the wall, there’s really no protection for communities.”

In 2019, Redeemer and its partners successfully got the nearby Jefferson drill site to shut down and have purchased the property through a land trust. The goal is to eventually build a park and an affordable housing complex there.

Meanwhile, at the Murphy site on the border of the West Adams and Jefferson Park neighborhoods, residents are now supposed to receive mailed notices when acid maintenance is set to occur.

The Murphy drill site in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

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Sarah Craig

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Faces of Fracking

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A Google maps screeshot of the Murphy drill site, owned by E&B Natural Resources, in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of L.A.

But Parks said that’s far from enough.

“ They don't tell residents what chemicals are going to be used, they don't specify the quantity of chemicals, they don't share what the health concerns are with each chemical, and they don't provide residents with same-day certainty about when the work is going to take place so that we can move our families out of harm's way,” Parks said.

Acid maintenance ramps up

Parks and his group have held four protests in recent weeks ahead of scheduled acid maintenance operations. They had hoped a motion introduced by Councilmembers Tim McOsker and Katy Yaroslavsky in December would stop the practice and help shut down the Murphy site quicker than the timeline of 20 years set by the previous oil ordinance.

“The idea was to protect our communities until the new phaseout ordinance was readopted,” Parks said.

However, earlier this month the city attorney recommended the city not proceed with that motion, citing the likelihood of further costly litigation.

In the meantime, in recent months, Parks said acid maintenance operations have ramped up.

A notice sent to residents, with an address obscured, ahead of acid maintenance operations.

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Courtesy Richard Parks

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A notice in Spanish sent to residents near the Murphy drill site.

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Courtesy Richard Parks

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That’s because the city was enforcing an aspect of the municipal code that went into effect in 2023, which requires a public hearing to be set ahead of such operations. Oil companies instead stopped performing the acid maintenance. But when the city’s oil ordinance was overturned in 2024 after lawsuits brought by oil companies, that enforcement ended.

“From October 4, 2023 to September 1, 2024, there were no instances of acid maintenance activities in the City of LA. However, from September 2, 2024 to March 12, 2025, after the ordinance was overturned, there were 32 notices of acid maintenance from operators,” Yaroslavsky wrote in a letter to the city’s zoning administrator on May 5. “This dramatic increase is due to the City’s inability to force the oil operators to file for a discretionary review to conduct acid maintenance after the ordinance was struck down.”

The city is expected to reintroduce the phaseout ordinance this year. Meanwhile, Parks hopes for additional protections, such as once again enforcing the acid maintenance code, electric equipment where possible, enclosing drill sites (which the city had called for at the Murphy site, but then reneged after the oil company appealed the decision), and additional communication from the oil companies and pollution monitoring.

“There are all these health and safety impacts of neighborhood oil drilling, and it's urgent that we protect the children and families who live around these sites while oil extraction is being phased out,” Parks said.

Go deeper: 

• Meet the investigators hunting oil well pollution in LA neighborhoods
• Milestone reached in Inglewood oil phaseout
• In a largely Black and Latino community, neighbors worry about the oil wells in their midst
• Historically redlined communities in L.A. lead the U.S. in oil and gas well sites, a new study finds

At Signature Post in Burbank, Mariella Abaunza, the post-production company’s executive vice president for business development, shows off a photo of her talking to Gov. Gavin Newsom at the recent signing of AB 2319 at the Television Academy in North Hollywood.

Marielle Abaunza holds a photo of her and Gov. Gavin Newsom at the signing ceremony for California's new stand-alone post-production tax credit.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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She was there with the coalition that lobbied for the creation of a new stand-alone tax credit for post-production work done in California.

“It definitely restored my faith in government. ... Advocacy works,” she said.

It was a sizable coalition. Abaunza is president of the California Post Alliance, the post-production industry’s trade group. Leaders of the Motion Picture Association and the Editors Guild were there too.

The post-production tax credit is aimed at stopping the flight of TV and film work to other states and countries, attracted by generous tax incentives.

While there are existing tax credits for filming in California, under the new law, productions qualify for a 35% to 50% tax credit if post-production work such as editing, color correction, scoring and sound mixing is done in California, even if the filming was done outside the state.

But industry advocates acknowledge there’s a weakness in the law: Proponents initially asked lawmakers to set aside $100 million for the post-production tax breaks. By the time Newsom signed the bill into law, that amount had been drastically reduced to $10 million.

“That's going to get used up in a couple days. … It's not hard to allocate $10 million in post-production in California,” said Stephen Weizenecker, an entertainment lawyer based in Atlanta who advises TV and film productions on how to take advantage of tax credits in U.S. states and overseas.

But he said that regardless of the much lower cap, the credits will make California more competitive.

Abaunza hopes it will be a boost for Signature Post. The 6-year-old post-production company, which mixed sound for films and shows like  "Everything Everywhere All at Once," "American Fiction," and "Lessons in Chemistry," has been experiencing a slowdown, like many others.

“We're still ahead of the game, and we still have the largest concentration of post-production talent of anywhere in the world,” Abaunza said of Southern California.

But she said that post-production advantage has been eroded by new facilities and worker talent in the U.K. and Canada, among other countries.

Monica Levinson, executive producer of FX’s "Love Story," "Say Nothing," and many other TV and film projects, points out that those countries have another advantage: a lot more government social services.

She compared that to the U.S. “The one thing that this country has are unions, and it has health insurance, and it has pension plans, and the things that need to be put into the budgets of productions,” she said.

Weizenecker also noted that as much as producers might want to keep production in California or the U.S., they may not be the ones making the decisions about where work is done.

“ If Netflix only gives you so much to spend on the production, including post,” he said, “you're gonna go where it's the most cost-effective.”

Federal game changer

While the California tax credit is a step in the direction of keeping productions in the state, a much bigger tax credit is now making its way through the federal legislative process that may be even more transformative.

It’s called the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act and was co-authored by U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina. President Donald Trump has also said he supports it.

If the bipartisan birth and early life of the bill isn’t enough to raise eyebrows, what it promises may be: a 20% federal, labor-based tax credit to U.S. TV and film productions where 75% of the days spent on principal photography happen in this country.

The bill would also favor post-production work and extend benefits to productions in some rural areas and places affected by disasters.

Marielle Abaunza is executive vice president of business development for Signature Post in Burbank.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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“These things could be real game changers to bring back the work here,” Levinson said. She’s the co-chair of the legislative committee for Producers United, a 3-year-old group that advocates for established TV and film producers. That position led her to join the coalition of groups working to get the federal bill passed.

TV and film production and post-production used to be dominated by California, and L.A. County in particular. But Hollywood, as it refers to what you see on the big and small screen, is a national business now.

“Everybody in this country is behind this federal incentive. And therefore, that's why it's become such a bipartisan effort because there's production in every state right now,” Levinson said.

Supporters have not said how much less money would go to public coffers if this federal tax credit passes.

A long-running court battle between California veterans and the Trump administration will continue, as federal officials consider asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s order to build more housing for unhoused L.A. veterans.

A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to temporarily pause the order to construct more than 2,500 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A.

Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs, told LAist the delay could spell life or death for unhoused veterans, especially as the region braces for strong El Niño-driven storms.

“These are veterans who risked their lives and suffered both the visible and invisible wounds of war,” Rosenbaum said. “What the government is saying to them is, you're supposed to stay on the street."

VA officials did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

Veterans' lawyers in a court filing called a possible appeal to the Supreme Court a “hopeless shot.”

“The government has lost every time they have taken this to court. No court has ruled for them on any of these matters,” Rosenbaum told LAist. “This is part of the administration’s war on its own veterans, and it’s time for that war to come to an end.”

Could long-running case end up at the Supreme Court?

The litigation was initiated in 2023 by L.A. veterans struggling with homelessness. The case has centered on the 400-acre V.A. campus, which U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has ruled should offer more housing to the approximately 2,250 veterans experiencing homelessness in L.A. County.

In 2024, Carter ordered officials to add thousands of temporary and permanent homes, and end leases with UCLA, a private K-12 school and an oil drilling company, which he said did not serve the needs of veterans.

An appeals court last month blocked the federal government’s efforts to halt the housing construction. But veteran advocates knew that federal officials could ask for further delays as the case winds through the courts.

VA officials now have until Dec. 10 to decide whether to appeal their fight to the Supreme Court. Judges with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told lawyers for the federal government that if they do not decide to appeal by Dec. 10, “the stay will be lifted immediately.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District shortened the application window for specialized academic programs this year, and will no longer accept paper forms.

Applications for the district’s magnet, dual language and affiliated charter schools for the next academic year opened Oct. 1 and are due Nov. 6, 2026.

How does it work?

If you want your child to attend their neighborhood school, enrollment is fairly straightforward. There’s a separate process for the district’s specialized programs called Choices.

There are two windows to apply — on-time and late. The latter consists of all the spaces left after families who applied on time accept their offers.

Here’s the timeline for the 2027-28 school year:

• Sept. 2026: School fairs start.
• Oct. 1, 2026: Choices application opens.
• Nov. 6, 2026:  Deadline to apply online.
• Dec. 1, 2026:  Late applications begin. 
• February 2027: On-time applicant results sent. 
• March 5, 2027: Deadline to accept or decline school offers for on-time applicants. School assignments for late applications follow the processing of on-time applications. Students may be offered a spot through the start of the spring semester. 
• Aug. 12, 2027: The school year begins.

LAUSD will no longer accept paper Choices applications. If families do not have a computer, they can use a smartphone to complete an application. LAUSD will also allow families to use computers at school parent centers.

How to prepare

Every child within LAUSD boundaries is assigned a school — find yours through the district’s “resident school identifier.”

But there are also hundreds of other programs available through the Choices process.

Those include:

• Magnets: Programs on a specific theme, such as science, math, language, advanced studies or art. These programs were originally established to integrate segregated schools and have a unique “points” system to prioritize applications. 
• Dual language or immersion: Students learn in English and in a second language such as Spanish, Mandarin, Korean or Armenian. 
• Affiliated charter schools: District-run schools with more freedom to try different types of teaching or other programs. 

No one type of school is inherently better than another, and no one metric defines a great school — there are many factors beyond test scores to consider, and we go over some of those here.

By far the most frequent piece of advice we’ve heard is to go on an in-person school tour if possible.

“The very best thing that people can do is go to the school and try to watch the way that educators interact with students, the way that students interact with each other, and the way that families are included or not in the life of a school,” said Jack Schneider, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, education researcher and parent. “Once you do that, you really get a sense of what kind of place kids are going to school.”

Some schools post tour information online, but you may need to call for details.

LAUSD also hosts fairs, organized by geographic region, where multiple schools table and share information about their programs, through mid-October.

The Justice Department found Thursday that the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, illegally considered race in admissions.

The announcement follows a similar finding against the university’s medical school and comes as President Donald Trump’s administration ramps up scrutiny of colleges’ processes for selecting students. The administration also has accused the UC Berkeley Law School and the medical school at the University of California, San Diego, of illegally discriminating against white and Asian applicants.

The UCLA School of Law said in a statement that it was committed to making admissions decisions in compliance with all applicable laws.

“Students are admitted through a comprehensive, merit-based review process that considers each applicant’s achievements and experiences,” the statement said. “We are confident in our process.”

Affirmative action in college admissions has been illegal since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling forbade it. The same ruling said colleges could continue to assess how applicants’ backgrounds might speak to broader characteristics, but Trump has accused colleges of using applicants’ personal statements and other proxies to consider race in admissions — which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.

The Justice Department’s investigation found UCLA’s law school discriminated against white and Asian American students by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants in its 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes. Its analysis found the mean LSAT score was lower for admitted Black applicants than for admitted white applicants.

The department also said admissions staff at the law school instructed applicants during recruitment efforts, including one called the “Diversity Admissions Open House,” how to reveal their race in essays.

“Like many of its peer institutions, UCLA Law School runs a two-tiered admissions system whose academic bar for acceptance shifts up or down depending on the color of your skin,” said Harmeet Dhillon, head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, in a news release.

California voters ended affirmative action in college admissions in a 1997 ballot measure. In a brief filed in the Supreme Court case, the UC system said the change led to a precipitous drop in underrepresented minorities, especially at the system’s most selective campuses. The brief said UC went on to implement a range of race-neutral measures to increase diversity.

The Trump administration also has sued over the main UCLA campus’s response to allegations of antisemitic harassment. The administration’s latest finding sets the stage for a voluntary resolution to bring UCLA into compliance with the Justice Department’s legal interpretation or, if none can be reached, potential legal action.

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