Oil companies like Chevron have earned millions of dollars from oil spills that sometimes run for decades. And California lets them do it

These aren’t ocean spills, they occur inland on California’s giant, aging oilfields.

Hundreds of spills have occurred since the late 1990s, according to documents obtained by @mydesert and @propublica

Some background: California may be known as a global green giant, but it’s also the 7th largest oil producer in the U.S. Its oil regulators are completely funded by the industry they regulate, and earn 67 cents off every barrel produced. Including from oil spills...

These oil spills aren’t easy to stop and clean up.

Some send geysers of oil, rock and mud skyward. Others burble out of the ground. Companies don’t stop the spills, they “contain” them with nets and pipes. Then they vacuum up oil to be refined and sold.

@chevron has earned at least $11 million off a spill that’s been running since 2003. That spill is now bigger than Exxon Valdez.

To contain it, the company built permanent concrete channels that can hold half an Olympic swimming pool’s worth of spilling oil and wastewater.

These spills can be dangerous:
One worker has died
Another employee had to wrench his ankle away from a sinkhole
A third had to abandon his truck as a spill mushroomed beneath it

Studies of spills also show they can be harmful for nearby residents.

California’s oil spills can harm the environment, too. Wildlife can be “entombed” by fast-rising oil, and habitat destroyed.

A Chevron spokesperson said: “We take our responsibility to operate safely and in a manner that protects public health, the communities where we operate and the environment very seriously.”

In 2019, inland spills were supposed to be banned, but the regulation actually allows many “contained” spills to continue flowing.

It even explicitly allowed a controversial oil production technique.

Known as “steam fracking,” the technique blasts scalding steam down wells at pressures high enough to crack underground formations, where crude oil is trapped.

The steam softens and thins the crude, and if all works right, it rises up through the well.

But sometimes it goes wrong, and oil spurts straight out of the ground. The resulting oily spills are known as “surface expressions.”

And we found hundreds of them have occurred in Central California.

Company execs and workers say the industry brings good jobs to Kern County and small towns on the coast. But critics say production, including the spills, are a throwback to a polluting past.

Canada completely eliminated these spills by banning the risky “steam fracking” technique, among other steps.

In California, more than a dozen spills broke out even after they were "banned" last year.

Gov. Newom placed a moratorium on new high pressure permits while scientists study the technique’s safety…

But companies with existing permits are free to keep steaming and to scoop up any spilled oil for revenue.

State officials declined to give us most production info for this story. But we pieced together data from a variety of sources showing a handful of oil companies have earned nearly $40 million off oil from California spills. Full numbers would likely be much higher.

There’s much more to this story. Read the full article and learn more about California’s spilling secrets here: https://www.propublica.org/article/oil-companies-are-profiting-from-illegal-spills-and-california-lets-them

Is there anything about California’s oil industry that I should know? Have any climate-related tips? Send me an email: [email protected]