The latest attempt by a Culver City legislator to lasso fracking and impose a moratorium has been stopped.
Last Thursday, Assemblymember Holly Mitchell’s (D-Culver City) AB 1323 was refused passage on the Assembly floor.
Ms. Mitchell responded with gallantry.
“We took the high road,” she said. “We fought the good fight, and we will live to fight again.”
Among the most keenly disappointed hometown anti-fracking activists was Rebecca Rona Tuttle.
With the spectre of steady drilling continuing at the nearby Baldwin Hills Oil Field, Ms. Rona Tuttle told the newspaper:
“The Assembly's refusal to pass AB 1323 is a tremendous shame.
“I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that some people would be so eager for new jobs for Californians that they would put job creation ahead of public health and safety.
“But that thinking is incredibly short-sighted. How can we create jobs at the expense of people's health?
“What good is a fracking job to a new oil industry employee if that very person is poisoned in the process?
“No, this is not hyperbole. To paraphrase John Paul Jones: ‘We (anti-fracking activists) have just begun to fight!’ This is a matter of life and death!”
A spokesperson for pro-fracking forces said that Ms. Mitchell’s bill “would have substantially hindered oil and gas production in the state. It would have driven up fuel and energy prices, and thereby harmed the job market in these sectors by prohibiting hydraulic fracturing and the use of fresh water in hydraulic fracturing until CalEPA re-authorizes the practice under a new regulatory scheme, if at all, in 2019.”
The End of PXP
In a related development, the most familiar acronym in Southern California oil drilling officially has disappeared this morning.
Eleven-year-old PXP, itself a spinoff, is no more.
Plains Exploration & Production Co. has been bought out by Freeport-McMoRan in a transaction that originally was announced in December and just closed.
