LA repeals oil phaseout law as residents near wells seek health protections

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Local rules to phase out oil drilling have to be repealed so that new ones in line with state law can be enacted.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