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Local rules to phase out oil drilling have to be repealed so that new ones in line with state law can be enacted.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.

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Google Maps

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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

California’s first-in-the-nation fast food council — created to give workers a voice on wages, safety and working conditions — has not met in over a year and has no chairperson.

Now the workers the council was built to protect, organized by the Service Employees International Union, are taking their concerns directly to the state, demanding that Gov. Gavin Newsom appoint a chairperson so the council can do its work, as required by law.

Luna Mondragon, who works at a Carl’s Jr. in Milpitas, told CalMatters through a translator that she started out as a cook but has done many other duties in her five years there. After she joined the fast food workers union, she said she began speaking up, especially when she started to experience aches and pains from her job. Since then, she said she has been retaliated against, including with fewer shifts.

“If we don’t have our health we can’t accomplish anything,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “It’s so important for them to appoint a chair. We need the council.”

The council was created as part of a 2023 compromise that also set a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. It has the power to set standards on wages, health, safety and working conditions — and to raise the minimum wage annually for hundreds of thousands of fast food workers at chains with 60 or more locations nationwide.

The council — composed of four members representing the businesses, four members representing labor and a chairperson who’s an “unaffiliated” member of the public — must, under state law, hold at least two meetings a year, though the law does not specify who should enforce this provision.

The council only held those meetings in 2024; last year it held two subcommittee meetings, the latest in February 2025. Shortly after, the council’s chairperson, Nick Hardeman, resigned when Newsom appointed him to a different state position. When reached by CalMatters, Hardeman said he did not want to speak on the record about a council he has not chaired in a while.

In 2022, the Legislature raised fast food workers’ minimum wage to $22 an hour. The industry fought back, gathering signatures to repeal the law. Workers across the state went on strike. In late 2023, the SEIU and the industry reached a last-minute compromise: Workers dropped a ballot fight in exchange for a $20 minimum wage and the establishment of the council. The SEIU-affiliated California Fast Food Workers Union launched the following year — lacking the collective bargaining rights of a traditional union but acting as an advocacy and membership group for workers.

Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor, would not answer questions about the council, instead referring CalMatters to the state’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency. Crystal Young, a spokesperson for the agency, confirmed that there is no chairperson and the council’s meetings are on hold. The council’s four-person staff continues to respond to inquiries and prepare for future meetings, she said.

On April 16, marking about two years since the council’s first meeting, workers delivered a 96-page book to the governor’s office, describing more than 100 complaints filed with CalOSHA, the state labor department and different city agencies since the council’s formation, alleging wage theft and poor working conditions. The union estimates there are about 630,000 fast food workers in the state, about 75% of whom are people of color and 20% of whom are immigrants.

“Employers feel newly empowered to threaten us with calling ICE when we ask questions about paid sick leave or [workers’ compensation] or report health and safety hazards,” Angelica Hernandez, a McDonald’s worker who is a member of the fast food council, said in the book.

Rich Reinis, a member of the council who represents employers and is a former franchise owner, said he has no knowledge of when meetings will resume and is waiting. In his view, the council should have been discussing “fire and ICE.” The phrase refers to the effects of last year’s L.A. County fires on the fast food industry and its workers, some of whom lost their homes, and what businesses and workers need to know about immigration enforcement.

Reinis also wants the council to order a study of the wage increase’s effects on prices and employment. Competing studies by UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz have reached opposite conclusions, and the question of affordability remains unresolved, he said.

A Los Angeles Times columnist who analyzed the competing studies concluded the debate over the wage's effects is likely to continue. Hernandez, the councilmember, rejected the industry's claims the wage increase has hurt business. “The sky didn’t fall on the California fast food industry,” she said.

The council is also required to submit a performance review to the Legislature every three years — a deadline approaching without a single full meeting in the past year. Before he resigned, Hardeman, the former chairperson, said it was hard for the council to reach decisions.

“The staff will have to write a report without having any meetings,” Reinis said. “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

Chris Holden, the former California assemblymember who authored the law that raised the workers’ wages and created the council, told CalMatters the council was “groundbreaking” and “needs to address the challenges that were the genesis of the council in the first place.” He said he hopes the governor is doing his due diligence to identify a new chairperson.

“I want to tell [the governor] to finish the job he started,” Julieta Garcia, a cook at a Pizza Hut in Los Angeles, told CalMatters through a translator. “Leave a good legacy for this generation and the future generation, so you can be recognized as a leader who gave fast food workers a chance.”

Young, the Labor & Workforce Development Agency spokesperson who was speaking on the governor’s behalf, confirmed that Newsom’s office received the workers’ book.

The governor's office has not said when — or whether — Newsom plans to appoint a chairperson to the council.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Nearly 20 years after founding a successful environmental and safety consulting services company, Robin Thorne said she still gets checked for being a Black woman in the construction industry.

“I've had situations where people, they don't even make eye contact, and then the male has to step back to say, 'She's running the show,'" she said.

Robin Thorne (in pink jacket) founded DemoChicks to help women of color land jobs in construction industries.

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Courtesy DemoChicks

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Thorne runs CTI Environmental, a multi-million dollar company that was contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers to do debris removal after the L.A. fires.

She’s been an engineer for decades and knows fewer than one of four workers in architecture, construction and engineering industries who are women — and much fewer are women of color.

That proportion is low considering 47% of the U.S. labor force are women.

That's why she’s organized a “Women in STEM Signing Day” at Long Beach City College on Saturday, May 30. The event’s meant to create the type of excitement normally associated with young people signing up for college sports teams.

She wants younger women to tap into their drive to succeed

There were far fewer women in these jobs when Thorne was growing up in Philadelphia, but she didn’t let roadblocks, including those in her personal life — like being a single mom on public assistance — stop her.

DemoChicks helps give young women of color exposure to construction-related jobs.

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Courtesy DemoChicks

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“When I thought about being an engineer, I didn't think about it being male-dominated. I just knew I wanted to be an engineer,” she said.

She added that some women do give up on similar dreams or fail to find the spark that allows them to see themselves doing these jobs. That’s why Thorne started DemoChicks seven years ago. She wants young women to see her and think “engineer,” as well as connect with women who are already working in these industries.

Mentorship, examples, and money

The organization is called DemoChicks because demolition is one of the jobs that keeps Thorne’s company busy. More women are entering architecture, construction and engineering jobs than before, but the percentage of women in each industry is still low:

15% in engineering
26% in architecture
11% in construction

These are mostly stable jobs with good entry-level wages, jobs such as safety coordinators, project managers, project engineers and construction managers.

Beyond giving teen girls IRL examples of women in construction industry jobs, DemoChicks supports their academic efforts, which often means helping them out meet college expenses. DemoChicks gave out $1,000 scholarships to eight women last year (35 applied).

A third generation Latina truck driver from South LA

One of those scholarship recipients in 2024 was Ana Terrazas. She recalled growing up in South L.A., not as a latch key kid, but as a truck cab kid.

Ana Terrazas as a teen at her mother's construction job. Terrazas now works for a large construction company as a project engineer.

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Courtesy Ana Terrazas

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 ”My mother… was a truck driver,” Terrazas said, driving belly dump trailers on construction sites. Terrazas would help her mother change tires and lend a hand with any mechanical repairs. Her grandfather was a truck driver too.

“Since then I've always been obsessed with job sites, and also the superintendent, the one that would tell everybody where to go, how to do their job, and organize everything,” Terrazas said.

Two years ago she was working hard to finish her two majors — civil engineering and construction management — to earn her bachelor’s degree from Cal Poly Pomona. She applied for and was awarded a $1,500 scholarship from DemoChicks. That help, she said, had a big effect.

DemoChicks founder Robin Thorne, right, presents Ana Terrazas with a scholarship.

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Courtesy Ana Terrazas

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“I didn't have to take as many hours of work to be able to focus more on my studies and also in my internship during that time,” Terrazas said.

The internship, at Swinerton, a nationwide construction company that's more than 100 years old, turned into full time work as a project engineer.

Terrazas paid it forward earlier this year, inviting Thorne and a dozen DemoChicks to a Swinerton work site during Women in Construction Week. She urged the women to tap into their drive to succeed and lean on people like her for help.

“As long as they're driven and this is what they want, there shouldn't be a reason for them to not be able to get a job here,” Terrazas said.

With LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries just steps away, it may be easy to forget that we have the richest Ice Age fossil site on Earth right here with the La Brea Tar Pits.

But the museum and research facilities at the tar pits are also scheduled for a multimillion dollar renovation.

Built in 1977, the George C. Page Museum at the tar pits has a special place in the hearts of Angelenos who’ve ever taken a field trip to see its massive mastodon skeletons or dire wolf skulls. Or have maybe shed a tear at the sculptures of the mammoth family in distress in the Lake Pit out front.

All that stuff is staying, museum educator Kay Lai told LAist, but new interactive exhibits will allow visitors to better understand the science that’s happening in their own backyard.

A rendering of the new outdoor amphitheater at the La Brea Tar Pits.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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The transformation

“This museum, as beloved as it is, definitely needs that refresh,” Lai said. “And I’m really excited for the next generation of kids that gets to grow up and make new memories here with this new space.”

Lai said the museum refresh will include a new focus on Zed — the 80% complete Columbian mammoth found here — and other notable animals they’ve unearthed over the decades. The mammoth’s bones will be reassembled and Zed will “stand tall for the first time since the Ice Age,” according to the museum’s website.

“We’re able to focus on the very first saber-toothed cat fossils that we’ve ever discovered ... As well as some of our Ice Age survivors ... like Pebbles the Puma ... Pebbles would have been the ancestor of some of the mountain lions that still live in Los Angeles today, including P-22 that passed away a couple years ago,” Lai said.

Then there’s the fish bowl: you know, the fossil lab with windows where you can watch researchers at work?

An even better fish bowl

“So we’ll still have the fish bowl, but it’s going to be much more interactive and there’ll be much more discussion of what’s going on inside the fossil lab,” said Regan Dunn, assistant deputy director and curator at the new Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research.

A digital rendering of the new fish bowl at the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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Dunn explained that the area where they store their collections of fossils and other specimens is getting major updates too.

“Super valuable, millions of specimens, will be in upgraded systems where there’s climate control. There’ll be enclosed cabinets and be under much better maintenance. And also allow for much more research to happen,” she said.

The La Brea Tar Pits are still very much an active paleontological research site. Dunn said any time a hole goes in the ground in the Hancock Park area, a new discovery is made.

With new outdoor classrooms and a 1-kilometer pedestrian pathway that will take visitors past excavation sites, the idea is to make the research going on here more visible to the public.

Your last chance to visit the tar pits before its two-year transformation is July 6.

A digital rendering showing the aerial view of the updated La Brea Tar Pits grounds.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

In the face of the nation's highest gas prices, California lawmakers approved a bill to ease restrictions on E85 conversion kits — devices that let conventional gasoline cars run on a cheaper, mostly ethanol fuel blend.

Assembly Bill 2046, dubbed the “Access to Affordable Gas Act” by its author, Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Stockton Democrat, advanced through the Assembly on a 59-0 vote with no debate or opposition.

The measure is the latest example of Sacramento lawmakers scrambling to respond to gas costs that have soared amid the Iran-Israel war, which has rattled global oil markets and pushed California pump prices above $6 a gallon. It now heads to the California state Senate and would need Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval before it becomes law.

“Californians consistently pay more at the pump than drivers from other states, and gas prices are once again climbing across the state,” Ransom said on the Assembly floor Thursday. “For commuters and working families, [the proposal] offers a practical way to save money.”

If approved in its current form, the measure would exempt manufacturers of E85 converter kits from an approval process by the state’s primary climate regulator, the California Air Resources Board, which requires companies to demonstrate the devices do not increase a vehicle's emissions. The bill would leave in place a separate federal certification process run by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Members in Sacramento are looking for ways to try to reduce costs — or appear to reduce costs of driving — and so this is a way to do that,” said Aaron Smith, a UC Berkeley economist and fuels expert.

The converter kits, which cost between $800 to $1,250, according to a legislative analysis of the bill, would let drivers convert their cars to run on both gasoline and E85 fuel.

E85 is a blend of up to 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline; the share of ethanol typically is between 55% and 85%, said Smith, the Berkeley expert.

Jeff Wilkerson, government affairs manager for Pearson Fuels, the largest E85 fuel provider in the state and a bill supporter, said E85 — much of which is made from Midwest corn — is largely insulated from overseas oil shocks that drive California gas prices. The ethanol blend has sold for $2 or more less per gallon than gasoline during recent price spikes.

While E85 is typically priced lower than gasoline and can reduce petroleum dependence and carbon emissions, it delivers 20% to 30% fewer miles per gallon, according to the air board, meaning drivers only save money when E85 is priced at least 20% to 30% below gasoline.

About 1.3 million vehicles in California can currently use the fuel, which is sold at about 640 stations statewide — just 3% of the state’s more than 15,000 fuel pumps, according to the bill analysis.

Ransom said more E85 pumps would be built if the state loosened restrictions and encouraged demand for the fuel blend. She stressed that her bill would present E85 as an alternative.

“For some people, it may not be a wise choice, but at least now it’s going to be a choice,” she said.

Environmentally, the fuel is rated cleaner than regular gasoline by California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. But that rating has critics. Smith, the Berkeley economist, said the benefits of ethanol are likely overstated. Official numbers likely understate emissions from land use as rising corn demand for ethanol pushes farmers to clear forested land.

The state’s own certification record offers a cautionary tale. Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the board, said the agency has received only five applications from companies for E85 conversion kits since 2008 and that none has cleared the certification process, which is designed to ensure modified vehicles still meet their original emissions standards. Supporters of the proposal argue the board moves slowly and its regulations are burdensome.

But loosening that standard carries its own risk, cautioned Aaron Kurz, senior consultant on the Assembly Transportation Committee, especially now.

As the federal government has stripped scientific expertise from regulatory decisions, he wrote in his analysis, “this committee should consider if the state should cede authority over an inherently scientific process and set a precedent for transferring approval authority to the federal government.”