Los Angeles seeks to ban oil drilling in urban areas

First modification: 27/01/2022 – 02:46Last modification: 27/01/2022 – 02:44

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Los Angeles (AFP) – Los Angeles seeks to ban oil drilling in the city, after the city council voted on Wednesday to prevent the construction of new wells and disable existing ones.

While Hollywood glamour, palm trees and sunny skies are the best-known images of America’s second-largest city, Los Angeles is also the country’s largest urban oil field.

Thousands of active wells are found under densely populated, low-income neighborhoods, abutting schools, homes, parks, shopping malls, or cemeteries.

Despite the fact that the huge oil pumps are part of the landscape, residents and environmental activists are calling for their removal, arguing that they pose a great health risk.

Council members voted Wednesday to ban new wells and commissioned a study to understand how to shut down existing ones.

“Oil drilling in Los Angeles might have made sense at the beginning of the 20th century, but it doesn’t make much sense now at the beginning of the 21st century when we’ve become a megalopolis,” said Paul Krekorian, chairman of the city’s budget commission.

There are 26 oil and gas fields in Los Angeles, and some 5,000 wells, according to the City Planning Department.

“There are oil and gas fields in practically every section of the 503 square miles (1,302 km2) of the city,” said Vincent Bertoni, director of this office, last year.

Ashley Hernández, who has campaigned for the closure of the oil fields, said that as a child she suffered health problems, such as eye infections and nosebleeds, as a result of these activities.

“I have lived all my life in front of oil extraction sites and I cannot explain how I feel being here at this moment,” he told reporters after the vote.

© 2022 AFP

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