Chevron has agreed to pay a record-setting $13 million to two California agencies in the wake of investigations by The Desert Sun and ProPublica of dozens of oil spills, and of lax enforcement by the state’s oil and gas division. But the announcement late Wednesday masks ongoing issues.
At least one of Chevron’s spills is still running 21 years after it began in a Kern County oilfield, although a state spokesman said it has been reduced by 98% “from its peak.” The amount spilled from the site, dubbed GS-5, is larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Chevron earned at least $11.6 million off GS-5 in just three years, The Desert Sun and ProPublica found, by trucking out raw, sticky crude from the gushing, burbling site, known as a “surface expression,” to be refined and sold. In fact, rather than stopping potentially deadly surface expressions, oil companies have routinely “contained” them with netting or pieces of metal, and used more than 100 of them as unpermitted oil production sites in Kern and Santa Barbara counties.
Wednesday’s announcement stopped short of saying GS-5 and other ongoing spills must be stopped, as required under state law, instead saying the settlement “creates a framework for managing the spills with State oversight,” and “Chevron agrees to continue monitoring the site with Department of Conservation oversight.” No specific sites were named.
In a follow-up emails and phone call, state spokesmen said the fines cover the first phase of the Cymric spill, a huge surface expression that Gov. Gavin Newsom toured in 2019, where a river of thick crude flowed down a natural watershed. Chevron for several years denied it posed a risk to health and the environment, and fought a $1.6 million fine imposed by state regulators.
The new fines, while unprecedented for both the Department of Conservation and Department of Fish and Wildlife, are a drop in the bucket for the multinational, which reported $2.3 billion in earnings in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Officials pledged tighter enforcement of oil company violations will continue, including potential criminal enforcement under AB 631. In 2020, a CalGEM spokesman told The Desert Sun/ProPublica it had issued $191,669 in civil penalties and collected zero. The then head of CalGEM pledged more public transparency, including of enforcement information. As of Thursday, 13 orders to pay civil penalties have ben issued by the state’s current oil and gas supervisor this year, but it was impossible to determine online if they have been paid.