Oil giants sell thousands of California wells, raising worries about future liability
The Los Angeles Times (https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/opinion/lisa-bohlman/2012/07/alleged-emissions-from-oil-well-sales.html) looks at the case against Chevron and Exxon, two oil majors that have been accused of selling thousands of wells to Californians who had no clue that the wells were being drilled in the heart of the world’s air-pollution problem. The plaintiffs in the case, the families of three people killed by emissions from the wells, want the companies to pay for their losses.
Exxon, which produced only 5 percent of the oil in California in 2012, made hundreds of millions of dollars selling gas and fuel for its wells, according to company filings and a spokesman.
Chevron, a third-biggest oil company, sold nearly 10,000 wells that produce some of the most polluted air in the state.
The companies have long challenged the state’s ability to hold them accountable for the consequences of their alleged misconduct. California, they say, has failed to comply with the state’s law requiring them to disclose the names of gas and oil well operators or face a hefty financial penalty.
The oil titans have been on a media blitz to defend their business practices in California, where their critics have seized on the case as an example of the state’s broken system for regulating oil, gas and coal operations. California is one of a handful of states that requires disclosure of well operators, but California regulators have not been able to fully investigate alleged wrongdoing in the oil industry. Under a law passed in 1998, the state requires oil and gas companies to disclose the names of their drilling sites and disclose any air pollution that their operations cause and to post notices of air pollution online.
This law, AB32, has been used to prosecute corporate misconduct in the industry, including Exxon’s use of chemical flax to make fuel for its oil platforms and the use of a chemical mix
