Are 1 Million L.A. County Residents Getting Fracked Over by Oil Company PXP?

The Inglewood Oil Field is owned and operated by the same oil company, Plains Exploration & Production Company, as the Montebello Hills Oil Field. Injection techniques are used in both oil fields to enhance the production of oil. Neighbors of the Inglewood Oil Field have complained for years of noise, odors, subsidence of land and health problems that they blame on the oil production. If residential development were to be permitted in the Montebello Hills Oil Field we can anticipate that the same type of complaints would be made by the future residents. The Montebello Hills Oil Field is located on higher land than the current neighboring residences which seems to have limited the oil fields' potential negative effects on its neighbors. Should development occur right on top of the oil field, which is what the developer proposes, problems are inevitable.

As usual, Wonder has raised concerns that the would-be developer has either not significantly addressed, or, as in this case, not addressed at all.

The noxious, cancer (and other diseases) causing effluent from oil extraction and production tend to rise in the air, so, as Wonder states, the current residents of Montebello haven't been plagued with the problems that residents of Whittier, Baldwin Hills and Culver City have had to endure. Oil production problems have pretty much gone under the radar here. Two significant exceptions are the two oil spills by PXP that reached the Rio Hondo River, one of which resulted in PXP being charged with crimes by the County DA, and is currently in the court system.

If the dangerous, city budget deficit causing proposed residential development would ever be built, it would create a new Baldwin Hills style environmental and health disaster for those residents.

Remember, there are more than 300 known wellheads in the oil field, and an unknown number from the first 20 years of oil production that occured before reporting was mandatory, all of which would be directly underneath or adjacent to the proposed condos. About 100 of these wells would be producing, and if the price of oil continues to rise, which seems likely, another 100 marginal wells are available to be re-activated.

None of this is addressed by the Draft Environmental Impact Report that has so many holes in it that it makes Swiss Cheese look solid and impermeable by comparison.

Fracking still in the news
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/10/busin...
Let's close the information gap about fracking
The oil and gas industry wants to withhold information even from regulators about the exact formulation of the fluids injected into the ground during fracking, calling them trade secrets.
June 10, 2012|Michael Hiltzik

http://www.alternet.org/fracking/155829/frack...

This unfortunately is not the premise of a new disaster movie in Hollywood, but a real-life, potentially threatening thriller that involves un-regulated and un-reported fracking in Los Angeles. More people are waking up to the threat of hydraulic fracturing and proposed drilling expansion in their yards in the city

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-po...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-po...