Written by Amanda Angulo
Kern County has to ration its water in order to survive the heat of this summer as well as to kill off the agricultural industry. This is a direct result of Newsom’s effort to put an end to the oil industry in California. Once agricultural and oil work is taken away from the farmers and the families in this county, it will leave them with nothing economically and will qualify them to be the poorest in the nation.
One way Newsom has been a lead contagion to this county, and ultimately the state, is by his ban on state oil fracking by 2024, which will cause the state to be forced to only import oil from elsewhere.
Democratic Uduak-Joe Ntuk, California Oil and Gas Supervisor has rejected permit applications for fracking for the second time in Kern County. He wrote a letter on Monday to Bakersfield Aera Energy LLC that he did reject the hydraulically fracture 14 wells in the South Belridge oil field.
“In the exercise of my discretion under (California law)… I am denying these permit requests ‘to prevent, as far as possible, damage to life, health, property, and natural resources’ and to ‘protect public health and safety and environmental quality, including [the] reduction and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the development of hydrocarbon… resources,” he wrote in the letter.
However, 2024’s oil fracking ban is still at least three years away. Ntuk’s rejection for retracting oil on a piece of California land could expedite this Newsom ban. Nonetheless, the company still filed an appeal. “It’s unfortunate and not unexpected that CalGem continues to deny Aera’s permits based solely on politics rather than sound data or science,” Aera stated.
The company also stated that their own scientific studies have proven that their work is safe and that denying the permit is not only hurting those who want to extract the oil and the business but families as well since many depend on fracking-related jobs. Not only the individuals, but California as a whole, since it will soon make our Golden State dependent on external oil.
