BAKERSFIELD, Calif.—As the whir of pumpjacks broke the silence at the Poso Creek Oil Field near Bakersfield in Kern County, the crisp morning air was unmistakably clean and fresh as crews monitored the equipment that measures any possible emissions.
In 2019, Kern County ranked first among California’s oil-producing counties and seventh overall in the nation, with 76 active oil fields producing 119 million barrels of oil and 129 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a lawsuit that the county Board of Supervisors filed in 2021 against Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The county contributed 71 percent of California’s oil production and 78 percent of its natural gas production annually at the time, the lawsuit noted.
“We’re importing from countries like Ecuador, where they’re clearcutting rainforests ... to drill for oil, instead of letting us do it here in our own backyard where it’s produced safely [and] where we get the benefit from it,” he said.
Peters said he believes that the state and environmentalists have adopted a “not-in-my-backyard” mentality toward the oil industry and would rather outsource drilling, extraction, and refining to foreign countries that are known polluters.
Statistics provided to The Epoch Times by the California Department of Conservation show that new drilling permits in the state increased from 1,788 in 2018 to 2,676 in 2019, then decreased to 1,994 in 2020. Since then, new permits have plummeted, dropping to 564 in 2021 and 551 in 2022, then to 25 in 2023 and 86 in 2024.
Skip York, chief energy strategist at energy consultant Turner, Mason & Company, told The Epoch Times that new drilling permits in Kern County have “gone from thousands down to dozens.”
The reduction in permits is “strangling the upstream part of the industry,“ he said, noting that it will ”put more pressure on ports and terminals because gasoline demand isn’t going down as fast as crude oil production is going down.”
“So that means you need to import more crude oil,” York said.
California’s Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) is the entity that approves drilling permits.
Current rules state that if CalGEM does not reply within 10 days, a permit is automatically approved. The catch is that CalGEM will send an email acknowledging receipt of an application, but then not respond for years, according to state Sen. Shannon Grove, a Republican who represents the Bakersfield area.
That one catch—the initial reply from CalGEM—has allowed the agency to stop thousands of permits from being issued, she alleged.
“They say it’s a budget issue, but it’s not,” she told The Epoch Times.
CalGEM is funded solely by the oil industry on a per barrel basis, meaning that oil companies “have to write a check” to the state for drilling permits “so it doesn’t cost the state” anything, she said.
Jacob Roper, spokesman for the California Department of Conservation, which oversees CalGEM, said in response to the allegations that the state has not “dismissed” the permitting issue.
“That’s a complete mischaracterization,” Roper said in an April 25 email to The Epoch Times.
He said the review and approval of permits are subject to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
“Kern County was the lead agency for CEQA reviews of oil and gas drilling permits for California’s largest oil fields, but several court decisions in recent years suspended the County’s practice,” Roper said. “Those decisions moved the entire workload to the state, and the Department of Conservation is making its permitting process dependable, efficient, predictable, safe and legally durable.”
Environmental Laws
In 2020, a California court ruled against the county and the California Independent Petroleum Association, stating that the county had violated state environmental law by issuing oil drilling permits too easily. And in 2024, a state appellate court ruled that the county had failed to meet CEQA requirements, putting a hold on permits for new well drilling.
“The court saw right through the county’s deceptive tactics on oil industry pollution and prevented an end run around the state’s fundamental public protections,” Hollin Kretzmann, attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said, according to a 2024 statement.
“Kern County is hell-bent on squeezing every last drop of oil out of the ground, no matter the consequences. It’s vital that every permit gets a rigorous review to protect public health and our environment from this dirty and dangerous industry.”
York said the Trump administration might be able to clear the “huge backlog” of permit applications at the federal level for onshore and offshore drilling permits that built up during the Biden administration, “but that’s not where the bulk of the production growth is going to be.”
The oil and gas industry is largely state-regulated, and most of the production does not happen on federal lands, so state policy often drives what can and cannot be done, he said.
Imported or Domestic?
California’s oil fields and refineries are the “cleanest, most nonpolluting” anywhere in the world, but environmental activists and state agencies are hurting the industry and consumers, state Assemblyman Stan Ellis, a Republican representing the Bakersfield area, told The Epoch Times.
“Someday, we’re going to run out of oil,“ Ellis said. ”It might be 80 years, it might be 150 years.
“We need to look at future energy now—alternative energy.
“I’m all about wind and solar. I like nuclear. I like fusion. I like nitrogen. I’ve been in science my whole life, and there is a pragmatic segue into other energies. But, it’s not right now.”
California simply does not have the electrical power grid or infrastructure to facilitate a world without gas-powered cars, Ellis said.
The state generated about 5 percent of U.S. electrical power in 2023. Renewable energy sources, including hydropower and solar, accounted for about 54 percent of California’s total in-state electricity generation in 2023, while natural gas-fired power plants generated 39 percent and nuclear power produced 7 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
“It’s going to cost billions,” Ellis said. “So, let’s stop fooling ourselves and come back to what’s real: We need oil and gas. We need clean oil and gas.
“It comes down to a political agenda and it has hurt our state.”
Mike Umbro, founder and CEO of Californians for Energy and Science—a nonprofit advocate for energy economics and environment—and a developer of an oil field project west of Bakersfield, also told The Epoch Times that state policies are harming the environment globally, while at home, Californians are left to pay the highest gasoline prices and utility rates in the country.
Air monitoring equipment shows in real time that there are no emissions from the oil fields at Poso Creek, Umbro said.
California has the most stringent environmental regulations in the world, which come at a cost to Californians at the gas pump and in their utility bills. And without drilling permits for new work, the state is putting tens of thousands of jobs at stake, according to Umbro.
“We lose on the environment, we lose on trade, and we lose jobs,” he said.
Grove, Ellis, Umbro, and Peters agree that the state’s reluctance to issue new drilling permits means that California will have to rely on imported oil from Iraq, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, and other foreign countries.
“We don’t produce it here,“ Grove said. ”We import it. We export our carbon guilt.”
In Ecuador, she said, there are no environmental quality restrictions.
“They run oil into the rivers, they displace hundreds of thousands of people, and we buy that oil and bring it here” instead of extracting oil “for Californians by Californians” and providing local jobs, Grove said.
Umbro cited a recent oil spill in Ecuador’s rainforest that contaminated drinking water “for 400,000 people.”
High Gas Prices
The state’s policies have a direct effect on gas prices, Reheis-Boyd said. WSPA breaks down the taxes and fees that are passed on to Californians at the pump.In March, state and federal governments charged motorists about $1.26 per gallon in taxes and fees, according to WSPA. Of that amount, the state collected $1.08 per gallon and the federal share was 18 cents per gallon.
The study, conducted by Michael Mische of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, challenges Newsom’s claim that Big Oil is to blame for the California pump price.
Since January 1995 through January 2025, Californians have been paying, on average, 13.1 percent more for gasoline than the rest of the nation, the study found.
California is the second-largest consumer of petroleum in the United States.
Meanwhile, oil companies are making pennies per gallon, Reheis-Boyd said.
“On a good day, we’re making about a cent, and if we’re really lucky, maybe two, three cents,” she said. “We’re not trying to say that these climate problems aren’t meritorious, but here’s the cost that people are paying for them. And so let’s just be transparent and quit pointing the finger at us.”
“Californians shouldn’t have to worry if our cars are giving our kids asthma. Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse—and create more days filled with smoky air. Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines.”
Reheis-Boyd said WSPA believes in a “diversified portfolio.”
“We have nothing against EVs, hydrogen, renewables, diesel, biomass, or traditional oil and gas,” she said. “But you cannot pick one winner, and that’s what the state has done.”
Daniel Villaseñor, spokesman for the governor, told The Epoch Times in an email that the shift from gas-powered vehicles to EVs is expected to take another two decades.
“California can both embrace our future of clean cars and protect drivers against gas price spikes,” Villaseñor said. “The state is engaged in meaningful and thoughtful policy work to successfully manage our transition away from fossil fuels over the next 20 years, not overnight.”
Tamie McGowen, spokeswoman for the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA), told The Epoch Times in an email that, on average, the state collects about $10.3 billion annually from state gas and diesel sales—approximately $7.6 billion through state gas excise taxes, $1.4 billion through state diesel excise taxes, and approximately $1.3 billion through diesel sales taxes.
Revenue from gas and diesel excise taxes and diesel sales tax “goes to support the state’s multi-modal transportation system efforts,” including state highways and roadways, local streets and roads, bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and transit and intercity rail infrastructure and operations, according to CalSTA.
None of this revenue goes to California’s high-speed project, according to the agency, but “a small portion of the funds go to solar generation efforts to support state transportation system needs and state fleet EV charging infrastructure needs,” McGowen said.
