After more than a decade of community resistance, a South LA oil drilling site could be shut down

Genaro and Catalina Ventura moved to the South L.A. neighborhood of Jefferson Park more than 25 years ago. The Craftsman-style house they found was a dream — spacious, with a yard where they could garden and their children and dog could play.

What they didn’t know before moving in was that just a few hundred yards behind the house is an active oil drilling site.

Genaro Ventura, a now-retired custodian for the city of L.A., worked nights. When he’d come home around 2 a.m., the smell of oil and chemicals was often strong in the air.

“Since the night is quiet, there’s no traffic or smog,” Genaro Ventura told LAist in Spanish. “You can really smell the air from the drill site, and it’s a terrible odor.”

[“Como la noche es calmada, pues no hay tráfico, no hay smog, y puede uno pues percibir el aire del drill site, y es un olor muy feo."]

Five years after the family moved in, Genaro was diagnosed with cancer in his left kidney and had to have it removed. In 2013, a brain tumor led to another surgery, and the following year another brain tumor required radiation treatment. He has to return regularly for scans. Most recently he’s developed lung cancer and is scheduled to start chemotherapy.

With no family history of cancer, the Venturas suspect the illnesses are related to air pollution from the nearby drill site.

And it’s not just Genaro Ventura. The family’s last dog died of cancer. Their elderly chihuahua now has cancer, too. Two of Catalina Ventura’s friends nearby were also diagnosed with cancer and recently moved away. Their son and many children in the neighborhood grew up with asthma.

“I’d like to leave here,” Catalina Ventura said in Spanish. “But we can’t — this is our home and we like the area, plus we don't have the money to move, so we’ve stayed here despite everything we’ve gone through.”

[“Yo me quisiera ir de aqui. Pero no podemos porque estamos aquí, es nuestra casa y nos gusta el área, pero tampoco tenemos dinero para movernos, así que seguimos aquí a pesar de lo que sufrimos.”]

Now, after more than a decade of community organizing, the drill site could be shut down. The city has scheduled a hearing this week to consider revoking E&B Natural Resource’s license to operate the site.

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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“It is really the  best chance we have ever had to see this toxic industrial site shut down and removed from our neighborhood,” longtime South L.A. resident Richard Parks said at a recent community town hall at a church down the road from the drill site. Parks is the president of the nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership, a group that has spearheaded the shutdown effort.

In response to questions from LAist, a spokesperson for E&B emphasized the company’s compliance with regulations and said the facility “plays an important role in supplying locally produced petroleum to the Los Angeles Basin.”

The spokesperson also pointed to a July report the company commissioned from environmental consulting firm Roux Associates. The report says “the administrative record contains no scientific evidence that the Murphy site jeopardizes or adversely affects public health or safety of nearby residents or workers.”

Daniel Murphy's home was a sprawling estate on West Adams Boulevard in the early 20th century.

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Courtesy L.A. Public Library

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Why an oil drilling site is in the middle of a neighborhood 

What’s known as the Murphy drill site on West Adams Boulevard sits atop the vast Las Cienegas oil field.

The site’s name comes from Daniel Murphy, a business tycoon who lived on an estate there in the early 20th century.

Murphy, who made his money in cement, oil and railroads, was also a devout Roman Catholic, so after his death, his family donated the property to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. For decades, the Archdiocese has leased the property to various oil companies. Most recently, the site has been operated by E&B Natural Resources.

In a statement, the Archdiocese told LAist it "has no direct control over the facility" and that "the health and well-being of the community remain a priority." It added that the Church understands E&B has complied with regulations "and has taken efforts to address the concerns of the community."

Although oil wells are present throughout Los Angeles, the effects are largely unequal. Through the mid-20th century, racist housing laws and discriminatory lending practices relegated people of color to certain neighborhoods.

Jefferson Park was one of those redlined neighborhoods and remains home to mostly Black and Latino residents.

A 2022 study found twice the number of oil and gas wells in historically redlined neighborhoods, with L.A. topping the list.

A Google maps screenshot 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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How much oil is produced at the Murphy drill site? 

Since 2018, Oildale, California-based E&B Natural Resources has operated the Murphy drill site.

Production of crude oil at the site peaked in 1973 at about 1,588 barrels per day, and of natural gas in 1981 at about 533 barrels, according to a 2024 amortization study commissioned by the city.

Ever since, production has declined. In 2022, E&B extracted some 251 barrels per day of oil and 21 barrels of natural gas from the Murphy site — a relatively small amount by oil production standards. All oil drilling within L.A. city limits now makes up less than 2% of the state’s oil.

In a statement to LAist, a spokesperson for E&B said the site remains valuable.

“Maintaining responsible local production also helps meet regional energy needs with resources produced close to where they are ultimately consumed,” the company spokesperson wrote.

Where oil and gas comes from in California.

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Courtesy CJM Petroleum Consulting Inc.

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The health effects of living near oil drilling

Today, it’s easy to miss the Murphy drill site. A mass of piping and oil wells is hidden behind a wall and manicured hedges, and next door to low-income apartments, an AIDS Healthcare Foundation clinic and an education center for children with hearing loss. A church, library, elementary school and high school are also nearby.

At the convent directly behind the site, Roman Catholic nuns are tasked with caring for the sick who call for them.

On a recent afternoon, Sister Claudia  of the Servants of Mary told LAist in Spanish that dark soot often covers the roof and walls of the building.

“A black dust settles even on the leaves of the trees and gets into the house," she said.

[“Un polvo negro que se queda hasta en las hojas de los árboles y entra a la casa."]

Many of the sisters have allergies they never had before living there, she said, and two of the sisters have cancer.

Sister Claudia, left, and Sister Maria de Jesus of the Servants of Mary convent in Jefferson Park.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Since at least 2014, the site has been the cause of dozens of complaints to local air quality regulators. People who live or work nearby have reported strong oil and chemical odors, noise and other concerns, according to records obtained by local nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership and shared with LAist.

For more than a decade, the group and its partners have organized to gain more protections on the site and, ultimately, shut the drilling down.

They’ve gathered the experiences of nearby residents, many of whom have suffered multiple miscarriages, respiratory illness and cancer. Numerous studies have found that people living near oil wells, which have been found to leak carcinogens like benzene, are more likely to have higher rates of asthma, preterm births and cancer.

But such research is not enough to shut a site down, and it’s hard to prove exactly where those illnesses come from. So over the last decade, academic researchers have partnered with the community to try to do just that.

“The burden is often placed on the community to prove they're being harmed,” said Jill Johnston, an environmental health researcher at U.C. Irvine and previously USC, where she led the oil drilling research. “ We're trying to establish some of this data-driven evidence to support the observations that people have experienced for decades.”

The researchers and community members installed air monitors near Murphy and another nearby drill site. They found that the closer to the site people lived, the more likely they were to have reduced lung function.

“The amount of reduction we see is similar to what you would experience from living with a smoker,” Johnston said.

E&B disputes the findings, arguing that it did not measure "actual site emissions or exposure and cannot establish causation."

In another study, the researchers partnered with the community to collect hundreds of toenail clippings to measure toxic metals associated with oil drilling. They compared them to clippings from people not near drill sites.

“The closer you live to an oil drilling site, the more production it has, the more nickel and manganese that you have in your body,” Johnson said, explaining the study’s findings at a recent town hall ahead of the Thursday hearing.

Too much of such metals in the body can lead to a variety of symptoms, including respiratory and nervous system issues. At high exposure levels, nickel has been linked to an increased risk of cancer.

Signs in various languages warn of the potential for dangerous gas at the Murphy drill site.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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The Murphy drill site is in a neighborhood with a convent, homes and schools.

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Isabel Avila

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How to shut down a drill site

The organizing paid off. In 2023, the community won a hearing from the city to consider adding new regulations to protect public health. Those new rules would extend protections currently in use in wealthier, whiter parts of L.A. They included enclosing the site and using electric equipment instead of diesel where possible. E&B’s permit also limits operations to between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

But after an appeal from E&B, the city rolled many requirements back. For example, the site no longer is required to use electric equipment — E&B recently started burning more gas for electricity on site.

The site is also still not enclosed, despite the three-year-old mandate from the city. Neighbors say they have on multiple occasions seen, heard or smelled operations outside of the allowed hours.

“ They know the rules, but they choose not to follow them,” Parks said.

In a statement to LAist, a spokesperson for E&B said the enclosing of the site has been delayed due to complex permitting requirements from the city and that the company “is awaiting action by the city on the necessary approvals.”

In recent years, under E&B’s purview, the Murphy site has logged dozens of violations from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the state and the L.A. Fire Department, according to public records obtained by Redeemer Community Partnership and shared with LAist, as well as publicly available data.

Since 2019, some of the most concerning violations have been for at least four methane leaks greater than 50,000 parts per million — the explosive level of the gas. In January last year, an inspector identified a leak at 209,000 parts per million, four times that limit.

Outside of L.A., the state recently fined the company more than $1 million for violations at a site in Bakersfield, which the company has appealed.

Now, the city is considering revoking E&B’s permit to operate the site. City Councilmember Heather Hutt, who represents the area, called for a hearing after being presented with the evidence from local residents.

“The city and the community’s attempts to regulate and mitigate this site over the decades has failed,” Hutt wrote in a letter to the city’s zoning administrator ahead of the Thursday hearing. “I am calling for the zoning administrator to revoke this use and continue to reset the balance between community needs and corporate laxity in urban Los Angeles.”

Neighbors of the Murphy drill site have been fighting to get it shut down for years. They held a town hall July 18.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Signs and slogans were common at the July 18 town hall. Others read "Save South L.A." and "End neighborhood drilling."

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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What’s next

During the city’s hearing to consider revoking E&B’s permit the zoning administrator will hear testimony from residents, who can sign up and submit their comments during the meeting or ahead of time. Meanwhile, E&B plans to present its rebuttal to city staff’s latest report on compliance at the site and other concerns.

At the town hall, Parks discussed another drill site, a little over a mile away, called the Jefferson site.

He and other local residents successfully campaigned to get that site shut down, too. The oil company that owned the property eventually decided to sell instead of facing litigation and the cost of carrying out practices to better protect public health. In 2023, Parks and his group secured grants to purchase the property, where they plan to build a park and permanently affordable housing.

“Bit by bit, an amazing transformation is taking place,” Parks said at the recent town hall. “We are receiving beauty for ashes. … If we show up and we share our stories, if we call for environmental justice, if we call for care for our common home, we are well-positioned to build something beautiful and enduring for our community.”

Catalina and Genaro Molina at home.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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After the town hall, Catalina and Genaro Ventura returned home and sat outside on their porch. They said they hope this is a turning point to better protect future generations.

“I hope the city becomes aware and does something for the people, for the animals, for the children, for the elderly. For everyone, for everyone,” Catalina Ventura said in a Spanish.

[“Y pues que la ciudad tome conciencia y haga algo por la gente, por los animales, por los niños, por los ancianos. Por todos, por todos."]