Continuous real estate expansion in Southern California is leading to new houses, businesses, and schools being built on top of or amid legacy oil fields, many of which are still actively producing crude or natural gas.
In the East Los Angeles suburb of Yorba Linda, there are at least 100 marginal wells scattered throughout the community. This project presents an opportunity to remove aging fossil fuel infrastructure and permanently eliminate the climate and local air pollution it produces.
The Yorba Linda project will shut down two oil/gas wells in a primarily LatinX residential neighborhood which, without intervention, are not required to be shut down until 2042. This verified emission reduction project will create local jobs and improve health and safety in the Yorba Linda community.
Residential wellsite in a majority hispanic neighborhood of Los Angeles
The Yorba Linda project offers great employment opportunities for skilled workers in the area.
From cementing and welding to regulatory and trucking, each of the plugging projects helped bring local professionals an opportunity to empower the Los Angeles energy transition. In addition to tackling emissions, retiring these wells reduces the health risks caused by nearby industrial pollution. Plugging wells also creates an opportunity to reclaim industrial sites and create green space, parkland, or new homes.
The East LA neighborhood of Yorba Linda is home to over 100 urban oil and gas wells
1940s Los Angeles, home to the largest urban oil and gas field in the world
Yorba Linda sits just south of the Chino Hills State Park in East Los Angeles. As new federal methane policies are enforced and costs to maintain or plug wells increase, small operators that often own low-producing wells are at high risk of bankruptcy, which would orphan these wells and allow them to leak methane into surrounding communities with no one to hold accountable.
Studies have repeatedly shown that breathing gets harder closer to oil wells – people living near Southern California oil wells have less lung strength and capacity than average for the region. People who live near oil and gas drilling sites are also at greater risk of preterm births, asthma, respiratory disease and cancer.
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When completed, this expedited decommissioning will shut down two active wells and their associated gas processing equipment, aging wellheads, and transmission lines.
