Central Valley company ordered to remove, remediate old oil wells in Carrizo Plain

A Central Valley company must remove 11 old oil wells from Carrizo Plain National Monument and restore the land around them following a long legal battle with environmentalists.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management issued the order Wednesday to E&B Natural Resources Management Corp., an oil and gas company based out of Bakersfield.

It comes after the Center for Biological Diversity and Los Padres ForestWatch filed a lawsuit in December 2020 to stop a proposal to expand and continue oil drilling in the national monument in eastern San Luis Obispo County.

A settlement agreement in the lawsuit was reached in August 2022, which stipulated the Bureau of Land Management must analyze the impacts of plugging and abandoning 11 idle wells in the Carrizo Plain, as well as restoration of the well pads and roads to each well.

A year later, the agency issued the order to remediate the area.

“This order is a giant step toward restoring the landscape in Carrizo Plain National Monument,” ForestWatch Executive Director Jeff Kuyper said Thursday in a prepared statement. “It forges a new era of conservation for this treasured place and will protect wildlife, nearby communities, and our climate from ongoing pollution. We hope the work is completed as soon as possible.”

Federal order: Old oil wells must be removed from Carrizo Plain

The 11 wells set to be removed are in the southwest edge of the national monument along Highway 166 in an area dubbed Russell Ranch. The oil and gas field was discovered in the late 1940s and is now close to the end of its productive life.

E&B Natural Resources must plug and abandon the 11 wells by Aug. 2, 2028.

Five of the wells have already been plugged and abandoned, according to the Bureau of Land Management’s Wednesday order.

Well pads with plugged and abandoned wells must then be remediated, according to the agency’s order.

E&B Natural Resources must use native seeds to revegetate the land, contour the land to its natural state and restore natural drainages, the order says.

Roads leading to the 11 well pads must also be restored to their pre-oil drilling state, according to the order, and any unneeded pipelines and power poles on the surface of the land must be removed by the deadline.

The restoration work must be conducted carefully and with proper mitigation and training in place to avoid impacting any San Joaquin kit foxes, nesting birds, burrowing owls and California condors, according to the order.

“This is a place for wildflowers, California condors and kit foxes, not oil wells,” Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said Thursday in a prepared statement. “It’s wonderful to see the fossil fuel era coming to an end here, which will benefit all the rare plants and animals of this stunning landscape.

“Now we need to phaseout fossil fuel extraction throughout California and the country to have any hope of leaving a livable planet for future generations.”