CARSON, Calif. (AP) - The Los Angeles County city of Carson has imposed an emergency moratorium on new oil drilling due to concerns that hydraulic fracturing would be used.
The ban approved by the City Council runs for 45 days but could be extended up to two years while the city studies the safety of various well stimulation methods and its authority to regulate them. .
The Los Angeles Times reports (https://lat.ms/1gVMKBV ) that the moratorium interrupts plans by Occidental Petroleum to bore more than 200 wells to extract more oil from the Dominguez Oil Field.
Occidental declined comment on Tuesday’s vote. It has previously denied it would use the oil-extraction technique known as fracking.
The Dominguez field has produced more than 270 million barrels of oil since its discovery in 1923.
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Information from: Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com
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