A bill that would ban fracking statewide is being used by Democrat lawmakers to perpetuate an appearance that they are advocating for a cleaner environment, according to a professor of economics at California State University-Fullerton.
“The most important part of the bill is that it establishes substantial setbacks for any oil production from nearby properties and that is what will hurt production,” said professor Robert Michaels. “It will cause a decrease in the demand for oil.”
As previously reported, Senators Monique Limon (D-Santa Barbara) and Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced Senate Bill 467 last week, which would stop any new fracking permits from being issued starting in 2022 and prohibit fracking statewide by 2027.
“Overall, California's political climate is that everybody who matters is a Democrat and almost all the Democrats who matter are liberal,” Michaels told the Southern California Record. “This is simply one of many, many, many liberal programs and plans in California that the legislature wants to enshrine into law. There's nothing special about it in terms of any real impact but there is something about it that's helpful to a few people because of the public relations.”
While supporters of the bill allege that fracking damages the environment, Michaels claims the measure would impact the economy locally.
“It's really just a redistribution of the mineral and the wealth away from California,” he said. “You're going to have a decrease in employment of people in oil-related industries. No question about it.”
According to Courthouse News, oil and gas produced some $150 billion in revenue four years ago and $21.5 billion of that was disbursed to the state.
“Oil industry jobs pay a higher salary because oil is a commodity in which you have a lot of skills that are pretty valuable,” Michaels said. “California is investing heavily still in intermittent, renewable sources, such as wind and solar and they need all sorts of equipment and conventional production to back them up even if it's not used more than a small fraction of the time.”
Limon said at a virtual press conference that the state and the nation need to move to greener energy sources but Michaels foresees limitations.
“In California, you don't have alternative sources like pipelines that are going to be able to change the flows very much because almost all of the pipeline system is natural gas coming from the Southwest and the Northwest oil pipelines,” he said. “Much of what they're doing is simply redistributing refined product in the state, which is not going to impact oil exploration and drilling directly.”