Los Angeles City Council votes to ban oil and gas drilling

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Friday to ban drilling of new oil and gas wells and phase out existing ones over the next 20 years.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Friday to ban drilling of new oil and gas wells and phase out existing ones over the next 20 years.

The vote comes after more than a decade of complaints from city residents that pollution drifting from wells was affecting their health.

"Hundreds of thousands of Angelenos have had to raise their kids, go to work, prepare their meals (and) go to neighborhood parks in the shadows of oil and gas production," said Los Angeles City Council president Paul Krekorian, one of the councilmembers who introduced this measure. "The time has come .... when we end oil and gas production in the city of Los Angeles."

Two engineers with Yorke Engineering, a California-based company that does air quality and environmental compliance review, spoke in opposition to the ordinance. They said a ban and phase out will have a negative effect because oil and gas operators will abandon wells. They said this is being underestimated by the city. If they walk away, that will mean increased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, they said.

But Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said these claims are "not credible," citing a review by Impact Sciences, another California-based firm that performed an environmental analysis of the ordinance for the city.

Los Angeles was once a booming oil town. Many of its oilfields are now played out but it still has several productive ones.

According to the city controller's office there were 780 active and 287 idle wells within city boundaries in 2018. An idle well is one that is not operating, but neither has it been permanently sealed, so it could be brought back into production.